Recently, Miss Hilda Barkington had been getting up early and retiring rather late. She hadn’t noticed any effect the lack of her previous seven hours sleep in favour of four had wrought. Hilda was ablaze with new knowledge and, despite her sixty eight years, she was aware of being at the cutting edge.

Hilda had always been possessed with a thirst for knowledge, a thirst that had initially been quenched by the oracle of the middle classes known as the Daily Mail. Since the death of her father eight months ago, the daily mail could only fill so much of her time, but within it’s pages she had seen a review that had changed her life.

This review had caused her to take a pilgrimage to a place known as PC World. A wonderful guru named Matthew had relieved her of a certain amount of her inheritance and provided her with a Sony Vaio laptop, printer, scanner, headset, multimedia card, digital camera and everything short of a partridge in a pear tree.

A phone call to the ever helpful people at British Telecom (are they really a private company now?) and a small package from the Royal mail (them too huh?) and Hilda was released from the constrictions of the Daily Mail and set loose in Google.

Oh what a change in Miss Barkington! Google is amazing!

Google also became somewhat of a religion to Hilda Barkington and one must never underestimate the power of the religious zealot. There is not a subject known to man that could not be googled, from midget pornography to how to boil an egg. Hilda had never even thought of searching for midget pornography to be fair to her. She had, however been considering the purchase of a pampas grass. Naturally she felt that such a momentous decision should not be made without thorough research and with that in mind she had duly entered the name into the search box the previous Monday. Initially she learned that the pampas grass is more accurately called Cortaderia selloana, unfortunately, her enquiries then led her into less innocent territory.

Hilda Barkington swiftly decided that she would not be buying a pampas grass that day, or any other day. This one piece of internet fuelled enlightenment was one she could well have done without.

Pampas grass in ones front garden denotes that the occupier of the house is what is politely termed a swinger. Initially Hilda Barkington had thought that the term ‘swinger’ referred to someone who was modish and fashionable. This had doubled her resolve to purchase such a plant, but just to make sure, she keyed the term into the search engine and sat back awaiting confirmation of her thoughts.

Hilda had a required an extra sugar in her tea to help her deal with the shock of finding out that such immoral and unwholesome activities existed and it had coloured her world view quite considerably. She had not wanted to believe this, but it was undeniably true, otherwise it wouldn’t be allowed to be posted on the internet would it?
Now a trip to church, or to the Spar shop had become a fraught journey through what she now knew to be a veritable gommorah. Evidence of sinful misdeeds was all around her. It was particularly distressing to see that Mrs Davis was engaged in such things particularly given her recent hip replacement and the fact she was eighty seven.

It was all very well to be possessed of the sure and certain facts of this wrong doing, but in doing so, does it place an obligation for a person to do something about it? This was a question she had wrestled with internally and, indeed, had been unable to sleep until long after midnight.

The next morning Hilda purchased a pair of binoculars and an A4 spiral bound notebook. She fully intended to expose the evil doers with the evidence of their crimes, in a letter to the Hotley courier and perhaps even on the village website. This sort of behaviour was not be countenanced in any way by a god fearing rural haven. She had not realised the sheer scope of the problem until that momentous day, and almost fainted when, on passing the rectory, she spied some offensive plumes. On her return home to number sixty nine, she carefully transferred her notes into her spreadsheet program and drafted a strongly worded letter to the Bishop on the subject of the waning morality of the clergy.

Today, Hilda was on a different, but not entirely unrelated mission. Hilda had noted that number sixty five was possessed of a large and rather showy pampas grass, a pink one. Hilda had not read anything which revealed that pink or white conveyed differing messages, but felt instinctively that pink was probably slightly more depraved in some way. Having met Michelle at the watch meeting last night she was quite convinced that her newest neighbour was unaware of the grave danger she was courting by keeping the beastly clump. She had already caught sight of a suspicious looking figure lurking near it the previous night.

It was with pure intentions that Hilda had resolved to assist michelle with the removal of the offending item. Placing her cereal bowl and china cup in the washing up bowl, she pulled on her gardening shoes and unlocked the back door, intending to collect a spade and the pick axe from the garden shed. Pampas, she had read, was very difficult to remove.

It was on returning with the items that she noticed that absence of her wooden wishing well, and the appearance of a bird table in it’s place. Hilda Barkington, had nothing against bird tables pers se, but she had been rather fond of her wishing well, and planned to plant it with spring bulbs that very weekend. And therefore she was not happy about this turn of events at all.
She put down the pick axe and the spade and went back into the house intending to write to the local paper on the subject of unsolicited garden feature substitutions.