Wednesday 3 July 2013

Slow News Day


Craig sat in the tree and watched the police divers plunge into the lake from their inflatable launch. Light rain drifted through the muggy air falling gently onto the surface of the lake. Two helicopters buzzed overhead; one a police vehicle with heat seeking equipment, the other a news chopper filming the scene.

More vehicles were arriving all the time; news crews, ambulances, fire search and rescue trucks and more and more police. Craig’s village had never seen the like. Craig’s neighbours were coming down to the lake to have a look and see what all the fuss was about.

As divers re-emerged from the water Craig could see them shake their heads to confirm they had found nothing. No sign of the missing girl they were searching for. It wasn’t long before they were heading back down into the dark depths to search another area of the lakebed.

On the shore a police officer was giving an impromptu press conference to the assembled media. Craig couldn’t hear what he was saying but he could guess.
‘At 3.30 this afternoon we received a report that a teenage girl had run into difficultly whilst swimming in the lake. Blah blah blah.’

The media were everywhere, a typical mid-summer slow news day  had them jumping on the smallest uncorroborated story to fill their 24 hour rolling news coverage. They were interviewing locals, asking who the girl might be.

 Craig was loving it. He watched four dog-handlers set out with their immaculate hounds and then heard rustling down below and saw Ronnie climbing the tree.
‘Hey they’re looking for you.’ He said, nodding at the police launch with a huge smile on his face.
‘Well they are not going to find me there,’ she beamed back.
They sat in silence watching the commotion below.
‘Cool eh?’ Ronnie broke the silence.
They hadn’t really expected this; they’d just thought it would be a bit of fun. Craig had had the idea that morning. Ronnie was one of the best swimmers the village had ever seen; she was like a fish. She had swam out into the middle of the water, waved her arms round for a bit until Craig raised the alarm and then ducked under water and swum to the other shore.

The divers resurfaced again with another shake of their heads but Ronnie and Craig had seen enough, they were hungry and it was time for their tea. They climbed down from the tree and wandered home leaving the police to search for a girl who was soon to be tucking in to her Shepherd’s Pie. 

No comments:

Post a Comment