Hoisted between the vicious, unrelenting pincers of Dorset, Cornwall and Somerset, Devon is one of England’s counties furthest away from the north. A land of hedges, rivers, fields, bunting (during national celebrations), crows, scarecrows, hikers and bikers, Devon is particularly noted for its big moors, the most particularly noted being Ex and Dart. One of them, I forget which, hosts a large prison (I can’t remember what it’s called) which has contained some of Britain’s most criminally-deviant celebrities.
It’s said that the notoriously hardened Kray twins constructed a tunnel that ran from London’s East End to the prison, through which they would pass notes, bread, milk, Barbara Windsor and other sundries to incarcerated associates, such as Jack ‘Cream Cracker’ Knacker, Biffo the Bastard, Count Dooku, and Derek ‘Slimmer of the Year’ Tamagotchi.
Whatever. For those less interested in England’s criminal underworld and more interested in England’s otherworld, this next bit will be more interesting.
Dartmoor is typically moorish: ferns, skittish ponies, bubbling bogs. Now, connected to one of the roads that runs through this fine old moor – I forget which, but for argument’s sake, let’s call it the A427 – is a very strange story indeed: a strange story indeed called the Legend of the Wispy Ears. According to local storytellers/bullshitters, in 1909 a travelling salesman, Piers Turkey, was passing across the moor in pursuit of sales. Fatigued by the snow and ice on that sweltering July afternoon, the hawker tied his horse to some sedge and rested his tired head on a lapwing’s drey. Drifting off, his senses suddenly sensed something diabolical. He opened his eyes by lifting the skin lids that covered them – probably by sending an electro-chemical signal from his brain to the fleshy flaps in question – and beheld an awful sight: two large, disembodied ears were suspended in midair – and they were apparently having a darn good listen. Outraged and horrified, Turkey dashed at the ears and tried to tear them asunder. “Don’t you be listening to me none!” yelped the inarticulate vendor. Try as he might, the ears shifted and bobbed from his furious reach, nonchalantly dodging his artless uppercuts and clumsy kicks, listening all the while. Beside himself, Turkey straddled his steed and made for Exeter. And that was the end of that. But. A few decades later…
1968: music outfit The Beatles are releasing music; you need a license to own a dog, oddly; Enoch Powell MP stirs the nation’s hearts with his keen sense of natural order, gayly shaking the hands of new immigrants to the country as they alight from sea and air vessels, ready to begin exciting and fulfilling new careers in the motherland that is head-over-heels to receive them. Meanwhile, in Devon, on Dartmoor, at about half past two in the morning, Molly and Peter Blockchain are camping. Travelling in their tea-grey people’s car, the happy couple have recently celebrated their eighteen-week anniversary, marking the occasion with an evening’s licentious touching and similarly prurient adventurism. Falling asleep under the glorious firmament, whilst shuttling owls fill the eve with the rush of wings and yikes and yowls, the ecstatic youngsters cuddle and discuss their plans for the future. But all this almost nauseating pleasantness is suddenly shattered: the ears are back. Virtually petrified, the cowardly couple stare aghast as the grotesquely enlarged appendages float freely about their camp. Peter later told the Exeter Express & Foxtrot: “These monstrosities had been listening to everything! All our weird sexual confessions! I’d been telling Molly how I’d like to be tied up and dropped into a vat of Yoko Ono’s excreta. Molly told me how she fantasised about having a go on Ted Heath in front of the UN. We both admitted to desiring a good whipping from the Turin Shroud. And these hateful ears had heard everything! Our secretest secrets absorbed by an incorporeal intruder! You won’t print any of this bit will you?”
Somehow the Blockchains managed to pull themselves up and fled into the star-jewelled night, returning somewhat sheepishly five minutes later to collect their car. The ears were gone. But gone where? Where they gone? Nobody knows. There have been sporadic accounts of the ears materialising along the – what did I say it was? – the A427 since that night, but they’re broadly the same as what’s already been covered, so let’s not dally. And that’s the end of that story. But what next? Is there a next? Yes. Yes, there is. Next…
Mysterious EnGland 
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