Bumper Crop Circles
We stopped for coffee at an awful Italian Deli in Devizes, Wiltshire, home of Wadworth’s 6X bitter. An old, bearded, rough-looking man on crutches stumbles up to us. Melanie offers to help him sit down on a chair outside the cafe. He makes jokes about not really needing crutches – it’s just to win sympathy. I escape by making a sharp exit and taking fractious daughter into a posh toy shop opposite.
Melanie relates this to me which happened in my absence: the man gets out a book. Mel nosily peers over at it, and sees it’s by Whitley Strieber, author of Communion, a story of alien abduction that she loves. He impresses her by telling her he knows him, and is going to be interviewed by Strieber on American radio next week. Mel asks why. It turns out he is one of the world’s preeminent crop circle experts, Michael Glickman, who’s been studying, writing and lecturing on the phenomenon since 1990. He is a man obsessed. Mel is quite excited. Michael says this season is going to be a bumper one for crop circles. There are already nine in the UK – all in Wiltshire. And only some of them made by humans...
Mel’s (somewhat dodgy) motto: always talk to old men with beards (crutches optional).