[West Ender]

I have a little story (I sound like Max Bygraves, don't I?) from about 1940, before I was born. My mother told me this and she swore it was the absolute truth.

My parents and my brothers were living in Spondon, near Derby, and not very far from the heavily camouflaged Rolls Royce aero-engine factory which was being targeted by bombers every night, though it was never hit. At the time there were many German spy scares and one spy had, in fact, been caught masquerading as an artist and painting the countryside around the factory. He was actually making detailed drawings of the area.

In their back garden was a small shed where Dad kept gardening tools etc. It was never locked and the garden was easily accessed from the fields behind. One day Mum went into the shed to get something. Propped against the shed wall, just inside the door, was a large metal cylinder with what she described as "buttons" on it and a "sort of handle" on the top. She said it looked a bit like something you would spray weedkiller with, but not quite. She had never seen it before and she had no idea what it was. When Dad came home from work she asked him what the "thing" in the shed was. He didn't know what she was talking about. They went to the shed so she could show him but it wasn't there.

After she had convinced him she wasn't hallucinating, or pulling his leg, Dad went to the police and told them. They sent round a couple of policemen and 2 men who Mum suspected were from the army, though not in uniform, who asked Mum a great many detailed questions then went through the shed and the garden with a fine-tooth comb.

If they found anything, they didn't tell my parents, and they were never told what the officials thought it was but Mum remained convinced to the end of her life that it was something to do with the spying on Rolls Royce.