Wright On! - Shelley Wright takes a wry look at life

MAYBE it's because I have spent my life in a town where strange and unexplainable events happen every day or simply that I've never been a big supernatural fan but I've always found it difficult to believe in aliens living in outer space and all that.

So it was with a certain amount of salt that this week I tuned into a Channel 4 TV programme on the Roswell Incident - the supposed crashlanding of an alien spacecraft in America in 1947 - and the subsequent allegations of a government cover-up.

But it's started me thinking about some very strange goings on at my own house, particularly with my discarded Christmas tree and two wheelie bins which have mysteriously vanished from my back gate in the last few weeks.

Have aliens really landed in Haslingden? Are a gang of green, gooey, bog-eyed monsters currently walking the streets, talking gibberish and waiting for the perfect opportunity to take over the town and then, who knows, maybe the world? And how would we tell anyway? I just don't know.

In terms of possible paranormal activities, the wheelie bin incident is less worrying than that of the 5ft non-needle dropping spruce I cruelly turfed out on to my front garden in the rain on 12th night.

Call me a sceptic if you must, but I don't believe aliens have chosen to execute a worldwide invasion from a couple of green bins moved to a central, albeit temporary, headquarters - probably behind Haslingden Public Hall.

I think it's altogether more likely that a gang of wheelie bin rustlers operating in the area have swiped mine in a bid to cash in on the black market in Ireland. Apparently, they're so short of wheelies over there that a decent example, like those bearing the Rossendale Borough Council gold crest, can fetch more cash than a Furby in a pair of Ronan Keating's underpants. But as for the Christmas tree, I just don't know.

The problem is it keeps moving around. When I left for work on Monday it was lying on the ground in front of the window and when I got home it was standing guard, upright, in the corner near the wall.

The next day it had moved again and yesterday it was balancing precariously at 45 degrees - I dread to think where it will be tonight - it seems to have a life of its own.

It could be linked to one of my neighbours, who revealed himself as one half of the magical double-act Trevor and Bert this week.

The duo gave a cracking show in the local pub, levitating playing cards, turning lottery tickets into £10 notes and generally amazing everyone with tricks - until I almost sabotaged it with my over-active imagination.

My unfortunate involvement began when Trevor asked me to come forward to help push three six-inch nails through a box of Swan Vestas - which I did as glamorously as I could considering I was wearing jeans and a pair of hob-nail boots.

And there I was doing my best Debbie McGee impression when he hoicks the nails from the box and passes it back to me to see what was inside.

No problem you'd think, until I felt the weight of it. I got it in to my head there was a live and by now very bloody mouse inside, shrieked loudly and chucked it back across the table like it was a ticking bomb. Imagine my embarrassment, not to mention his, when he opened the box to reveal nothing more than a lump of solid brass. Oops. Then Bert, who had obviously not witnessed that particular embarrassing episode, asked me to pick a card from the pack, look at it and put it back in the pack in true Magic Circle-style. Keen to seize this chance of redemption in front of the whole of Grane I obligingly did but felt terrible when Bert picked a card from the top of the pack, believing it to be mine, and it wasn't.

So perhaps between them they've decided to spirit my bin away and levitate my tree, but then again, perhaps not. More likely an alien has taken it back to Mars, I mean, if there's a shortage of them in Ireland, what's it going to be like there?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.