Banjo Trouble at Combwich

Here we are at Combwich on the hottest afternoon of the summer of 1959, and the little tank engine unofficially borrowed from Shrewsbury shed refuses to move another inch until someone finds the station cat, which is just one of Bob Geeza Cat’s many roles. “He were here this morning,” declares Driver Wilkins, wiping soot from his brow. “Sat on the coal bunker like Isambard Kingdom Brunel.” Nobody questions this, for Bob Geeza effectively runs the railway. The stationmaster searches the parcels van. The porter searches the waiting room. Old Ernie searches inside a milk churn for reasons nobody fully understands. Meanwhile, the locomotive simmers impatiently beside the platform, puffing little sighs of smoke into the enormous cotton-wool clouds drifting above the Levels. A dachshund named Cecil barks furiously at a suspicious clump of grass near the rails, convinced it is either a hedgehog or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then comes the strange sound. “Banjo music,” whispers the…