Our newest and weirdest village correspondentWembley Harrisoffers his take on the week's news. This week: Aliens spotted above Maidstone and Fergus and Judith Wilson's sudden departure from the landlord business. Follow Wembley every Friday, only at kentmessenger.co.uk

Ah, newsdesk. Wembley here.

Well, the good news is that the "superfluous-to-requirements" computer sent to me by your IT department so many years ago now is finally working, and I am back in contact with the land of the living.

It took a while certainly, and for a few years we thought the blasted machine had indefinitely frozen, until we - that's my friend Keith Pilchards and I - finally realised that image of councillors Garland and Wooding shovelling gold bullion into the public toilets at Sutton Valence wasn't a screen saver at all, but had actually been stuck on with double-sided tape by the IT boys, for reasons best known to themselves. After we took that off it was plain sailing.

Anyway, that's the good news. The rest is pretty much all bad.

I think I explained in our last e-conversation that I'm currently involved in a long-running wrangle with the parish council at ************, near Maidstone, and following a series of correspondence, which culminated in a threatening email received on the 13th of August 2001, decided to move away from the area and relinquish my position as village correspondent for said parish.

We needn't go into the whys, the wherefores, and the "what the hells!?" behind this, but it's enough to say that, while I still deny liability, we're just all glad the events of the past decade have finally "went their way" to a conclusion... although it's with sadness that I report the stutter which suddenly gripped Reverend Gladstone during the height of the troubles seems unlikely to release him anytime soon.

Still, my hope is that despite all this, and despite the fact that I can't say exactly where I'm reporting from, you'll still value my correspondence. The important thing is that I am "near Maidstone" having been fortunate enough to find a good deal on a 1979 gas-conversion touring wagon in your own classified ads, and doubly fortunate to gain permission from a friend to park it on his land, behind a bush, far from the eyes of the borough planners.

It's a unique spot actually, with views spanning land from Malling to the Weald and down onto Maidstone itself. And it's somewhat ironic, on a clear day when the wind's in the right direction I can even see your office through the periscope-cum-telescope I put together and mounted on my roof. It's part periscope, part telescope.

I call it a "periscope".

So, the long and the short of it is, I hope you agree I'm uniquely equipped and uniquely positioned to be of great potential benefit to your newsroom... you know, as a kind of orbiting satellite to the Messenger's Central Control Room - a sort of unidentified news drone drifting soundlessly through core area, behind hedges and down alleyways, just out of sight from its naive inhabitants.

Let me know your thoughts.

That reminds me... Good God, I almost forgot! Speaking of unidentified drifting objects, did you get any more calls about that huge jellyfish floating above the town the other week? I refer of course to your story entitled "Giant jellyfish and fireballs add to X Files" on p14 KM September 4. Well!? did you get any calls?

DID YOU!?

Because I certainly did.

I think it must have been Sunday - August 23 I think - when Alan from *********** called up to say he was, at that precise moment, watching - and he used almost the exact words reported in your newspaper - "a ridiculously large jellyfish" moving northwest over Staplehurst, on a direct course for Hurst Green. Of course, I immediately leapt to my periscope with Alan still on the line and got the thing in my sights.

"That's no jellyfish, Alan" I said, once I'd focused in on it, "it's a giant squid."

"Really?" he said, "but I could have sworn...."

"I know Alan... I know, but I can see the thing quite clearly. And it's a squid."

"Egad... should we phone someone in Hurst Green?"

"No, hold fire, it's not heading there. It's on a direct course for the Bull Inn at Linton."

"But Wembley, it can't be! That's my local!"

"I know. But don't worry, most squid are harmless if you don't antagonise them. Maybe buy it a drink"

"Ok, bye"

Well, it stands as a good case in point to show, as I'm sure your reporters are all too well aware following this spate of UFO sightings, just how easy it is to slip up when attempting to identify strange shapes in the night sky. My advice is simply this: if you see something large and shaped like a jellyfish in the sky at night - and you don't have a powerful periscope - just close your bedroom curtains and try to forget about it. Make yourself a cup of milky tea and go to bed. If it's still there when you look outside in the morning, worry then.

As for our giant squid, I'm not sure we'll ever discover the total truth, but the following morning I took a trip over in the direction I'd seen it heading and found something most intriguing in a little copse about two fields from the roadside - a huge giant squid-shaped kite which had been artfully disguised as a jellyfish.

No one in the area has any idea who's behind it, but my suspicions were raised later that afternoon when I got another call from Alan. It struck me immediately as odd, as I recalled Alan had been due to watch a rugby match that afternoon.

"Boring match is it?"

"No Wembley, the match is off. You'd best get on to your sports-desk."

Well, I'll cut a long story short and no doubt the yarn will turn up on the newsdesk soon enough... it turned out the home side had been caught red-handed in a changing room with 500 sq yards of rip-stop nylon, fifteen cases of pritstick and an illustrated natural history guide to "Creatures of the Deep". A marine life expert has been embroiled in the affair too, having somehow been drawn into offering "membrane and stalk detail not covered by the guide".

What the hell were they trying to do?

All I can say is the whole thing will no doubt come out in the disciplinary, and according to an old sports-desk friend from Fleet Street it's pretty mundane stuff for the rugger set these days anyway.

Is this the end of property gurus Fergus and Judith Wilson? I read in your Kent Messenger this week that they're selling more houses than many people can count; thereby relinquishing a renowned collection of buildings stretching from Maidstone to the Far East and an empire the like of which has not been seen since the Ottomans.

But what for? Why give it all up? And more importantly what will come in its wake?

Oh, monster cows, that's what.

Having decided to finally call time on empire expansion, the couple have apparently chosen to start breeding a strain of "double-muscled" bovine, which I understand - as a regular subscriber to the top beef trade publications - some agriculturally educated critics would rather eliminate.

This breed is the monstrous Belgian Blue - seen here in an informative You Tube documentary - and it will be breeding on a farm near you, soon.

The Wilsons are yet to confirm if any of their new acquisitions will be following in the hoof-steps of their racehorse Maidstone Mixture in the Grand National next year, but I've got a few quid set aside just in case.

Did I say quid? I meant squid of course. And giant ones at that. Only something extremely large and mad enough to wrestle a Sperm Whale can stop these monsters now.

Yours

Wembley Harris,

A caravan somewhere near Maidstone.