Ice and a slice?

He later described the colour of the object ,to the local press reporter, as 'ice-blue'.

This was based on the strong memory of this particular shade in metallic sheen of his first ever brand new car, an Austin Allegro saloon which the sales manager at the local showroom had driven around to the forecourt to present to its proud owner. Within a few years of harsh rural winters and attack by rock-salt the ice blue had dulled to just an indiscriminate blue, speckled with the first perforations of serious corrosion.

The actual colour of the object was perhaps a deeper blue, artificial rather than natural in its appearance. He tried to recall other features, oh, apart from the undeniable fact that the object was frozen solid. It had appeared unannounced in the dead of night . He was entirely sure of that as being a habitual late to bedder he would have surely heard the great noise of its impact through his small homemade cold frame up until the early hours.

That morning upon his awakening and on his usual first dawn patrol of the vegetable patch there was not much to report. No signs of rabbit prints amongst the fresh shoots of the carrots , a few silvery trails of slugs across the path, a wrapper from Danish Bacon held in suspension ,by a light breeze,against the chicken wire of the polythene tunnel sheltering his lettuce crop.Next doors cat had been in the loose bin bags again.

Then he saw the imploded timber and glass of the cold frame and nestled in the debris, like a Faberge Egg, was the solid blue ice-cube.

With a long and slightly warped bamboo garden cane he prodded the blue block. He had overestimated the strength of the thinnest end of the cane and had made no allowances for any strength from the sheer density of the block. The outcome was a sharp snap, a splinter of natural fibres and a very limp and ineffective instrument for subsequent probing. He resorted to a tried and tested kick with his hobnail gardening boots. No movement, no give and no sign of weakness or splinter factor there.

Sensing no immediate threat he moved closer and tentatively sniffed the immediate air for any clues as to composition of the object. There was a specific lowering of temperature at this distance, even above the, what, only three to four degrees of the chilly morning. No odour however. He stared into the deep blueness and could just make out a reflection of his ruddy face and the brightening sky behind.

A long crowbar and shovel could not shift the object. The lip of the sturdy former builders wheelbarrow, used like a sand iron golf club could not get any purchase to attempt a flip and roll of the object.

Within the hour his brother in law arrived. His job at the former Austin Motors showroom, now a car repair workshop, gave him access to a recovery vehicle based on a Leyland Daf cab and chassis. Digging by hand around the still frozen cube the two of them managed to fashion a lifting hoist and under hydraulic power the object was raised and swung out and around onto the flatbed of the truck. Small fragments of the cold frame were not so much embedded in as frozen on.

After a couple of phone calls , one to the local Police House and the other to the Council, the transportation was directed to the nearest Local Authority Facility which was a depot for the winter rocksalt and gritting machines which kept the remote rural area as free as possible from complete whiteout conditions.

Ironically, the same process involving rocksalt that had eaten away at his ice blue Allegro gradually dissolved the blue ice block. In the following weeks of warmer weather there was some vaguely recognisable odour from the crater of cobalt tinted soil which marked the final resting position of the object.

The event made it to the small filler paragraphs of the local paper under the heading of 'Unidentified Frozen Object-UFO gives grief to spring veg'.

Some months later a memo was circulated to the Pilots and Aircrew of Commercial airline flights between Dusseldorf and Ontario. It read ' After crossing the Dutch coast but before crossing the East Yorkshire Coast at the Patrington Spire vector please ensure that purging the tanks of your chemical lavatories is fully completed.'

The mention in the newspaper provided him with celebrity status but there was also a downside from the whole affair. There was an atmosphere of general hilarity on his arrival at the village pub culminating in the depositing of some blue urinal disinfectant cubes in his pint of best ale. Later in the same year his entry, into the local Horticultural Show ,of cold frame nurtured produce, was shamefully vandalised by a liberal sprinkling of blue food colouring and the mounting of a small toy flying saucer in the head of the, until then, odds-on prize winning cauliflower.

(Edited and revamped from last year. Based on a true story from a Holderness, East Yorkshire Village)