The news was that O’Donnell’s funfair was cancelled due to an attempted murder. My sister and I weren’t all that bothered about the cancellation of the fair and were actually quite pleased about the attempted murder. Firstly, we’d had no experience of O’Donnell’s fair and therefore didn’t know what we’d be missing, but we did like it when anything bad happened in the village, as long as it had nothing to do with us (and since the murder was only attempted and not committed). Looking back, it seems a bit schadenfreudey and mean, but you have to remember the village didn’t like us. The reason for the fair being cancelled was that Mr Clegg, on whose land the fair always took place, had committed attempted murder. He’d shot his wife, then run away along a canal bank. It was almost a double-death because Mr Clegg flung himself into the water to drown, but it turned out to be no deaths as the wife was only grazed and Mr Clegg was fished out of the canal before he had time to drown by four members of the ornithology club who were hiding out in the bushes because someone claimed to have seen a very rare egret in that spot.
