Why The Permit To Travel Machine Was Dead As A Dormouse

…because it was inhabited by a family of them.

The Metro today plus the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail have a story featuring Little Kimble station, which I can see across the fields out of our back windows. A family of rare edible dormice, also know as Glis Glis, have been inhabiting the permit to travel machine. The ticket collector discovered them when investigating why the machine was frequently out of order. They are a rare and protected species and tend only to be found in this area of the Chilterns. They have been rehoused in St. Tiggywinkle’s animal hospital a few miles away in Haddenham, also famous for rehabilitating injured red kites.

Here are the links to the stories. There are some nice pictures of the mice.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/843266-nesting-dormice-to-blame-for-broken-ticket-machine

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318403/Rare-dormice-make-nest-ticket-machine-Little-Kimble-railway-station.html

Little Kimble Station in the Snow in January 2010
Little Kimble Station in the Snow in January 2010

I often use the permit to travel machine as Little Kimble station is far too small to have a proper ticket machine, let alone a ticket office. It’s taken quite a lot of my 5p coins when I’ve travelled into London recently, although the mice have left it out of order on many occasions.

We have mice all over the place here — they invade the garage in winter and once polished off an entire Christmas pudding I was maturing and are always running around in the garden. I’ll need to take a look to see if they’re the edible variety.

It’s quite interesting to hear a quirky tale of rural life as last night I made a visit to Dibley — more accurately The Bull and Butcher in Turville, which is the location where ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ was filmed, as well as countless other TV series and films (like Midsomer Murders). The pub is a lovely old village local with a massive fireplace and even a well inside one of the rooms (it goes down about thirty feet so it’s fortunate it’s covered over with glass).

'Daisy' Shortly After Leaving Little Kimble
'Daisy' Shortly After Leaving Little Kimble

Maybe the mice can burrow their way into The Angel? Anyway, it’s a Good excuse for not having a ticket — ‘Sorry but it was illegal for me to disturb the dormice’.