Phantom menace

Gardening inevitably throws up a few surprises, but some hidden extras are quite ghoulish, as Toby explains…

- Toby Buckland

WHILE clearing the veg plot, I was ‘quid’s in’ after repeatedly finding pound coins strewn across the soil. It turned out the same doubloons were falling from a hole in my coat pocket, and after a heads ’n’ tails count of the shrapnel, I found I was worse off than when I started.

We all make mistakes, some more comical than others. Take the dog walker who found a human foot half-buried in a muddy field in Gateshead. After a large-scale police search and the deployment of a specialist dog unit, the pinkie turned out to be potato. Or, as noted in the crime-scene report, a ‘pota-toe’ (boom boom!).

Amateur historians have now claimed the find as the long-lost remains of King Edward (ba-dum!). While in Hollywood, rumour has it, Sir Anthony Hopkins has bought the rights for an American remake, tentatively called Silence of the Yams. (ba-dum cha!) Honestly, this stuff practically writes itself…