A gated community in Leiston, Suffolk is celebrating after a ‘theft’ Christmas wreath was returned to its rightful owner.
It all started when Fiona Cruddup (64) who lives in the Heron Close community of apartments woke up one morning last week, excited at the prospect of looking at the wreath she had hung on her front door the day before. After all, what’s the point of hanging a wreath on the outside of your house if you only get a fleeting glance at it as you struggle through the front door with six bags of heavy shopping? If anything, a wreath pressing into your face as you fumble with your keys just gets in the way. Traditionally, a wreath hung on the outside of a front door, is for the viewing pleasure of passing Christians, or postmen, although the latter tend not to visit so much these days. Heathens!
Wha? Wreath theft…
When Mrs Cruddup stepped outside to admire her Christian credentials, she was astounded to find that the wreath was… wait for it… gone. In a panic, Cruddup, a former Miss East Anglia (that was a long time ago) looked around the entrance hall to her flat, waving her arms around a bit, repeatedly mouthing the halfwords ‘wha?’, and ‘whe?’. We asked the slightly slouching, former beauty to tell us what happened next.
“When I realized that the wreath had been stolen, and after I’d waved my arms around a bit, I began to get angry, as you do, and started to mumble lots of very un-Christain words under my breath. Then I dropped to my knees and started to weep, hoping that God or Jesus might hear my cry for help. I waited quite a long time, but nothing happened. It was then that I decided to lie on the carpet and roll around a little, moaning bereftly, but still, nothing happened.”
Christian Gods stay out of it
Through saggy jowls and obvious false teeth, the stunning ex-model explained what she did next. “When I realized neither God nor Jesus were going to do anything about it, I went back inside and slammed the door behind me. Furious, I opened up my lap computer and started to type a message to the thief. I just needed to get the anger out. In the note, I explained how cheesed-off I was and demanded that the wreath theft be returned by latest Xmas eve. The day before Jesus’s birthday.”
In a fit of pique that she later came to regret, the spicy (albeit slightly prune-like) old sort, printed out her message and taped it to her front door using heavy-duty, industrial gaffer tape when a little Blutack or sellotape would surely have been sufficient.
Previous evening
It was only when neighbour, Jill Parsons (21) from No.32, upstairs came down carrying an identical wreath to the one stolen from Mrs Cruddup that the apparent ‘crime’ was solved. Jill explained to Fiona how when she had returned home from work the previous evening, she was surprised to find that someone had pinned the wreath she was carrying to her front door. After a little head-scratching, the two, between them, realized that Mrs Cruddup (who has been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for 15 years) had attached her wreath to Jill’s front door.
So it turns out there is a God, and a Jesus after all! Definitely.