Two Unusual Cases

Jul 13, 2025

These are two examples of people I remember, who were doing something very odd.

Actually I remember lots of people who were doing odd things in suspicious circumstances but these are simply two instances of that which happened to be in the forefront of my mind today.

Case one: The Mystery Woman.

This case occurred in or around 1979 or early 1980.

I was working on shifts as a cashier in a petrol station and attending Emin meetings during the days and evenings when I wasn’t on my shift. Often I would be doing unpaid volunteer work as a “Red Sash” at the Emin Centre in Putney.

I was pretty much a slave in those days because I gave the major part of my earnings from my day job to the Emin as a combination of subscription fees and anonymous donations and I then worked unpaid for the Emin in my so-called “leisure” time.

One day at the Putney Centre there were two of us “Red Sashes” working on the reception desk in the main foyer. The other man said he was taking his tea break and he went downstairs to the coffee bar in the basement, leaving me to man the fort in his absence.

On the counter was the pyramid shaped box with a slot in the side which was there to receive voluntary donations and, along side of that, there was a signing-in book.

After a little while a woman came in the front door.

I didn’t recognise her. She wasn’t anyone I had ever seen before. She was a youngish looking woman with dark hair. She wore fairly ordinary clothing and looked as though she could be an Emin member. I greeted her and asked her to sign in the book.

She refused to sign in. She spoke with a mild North American accent and she spoke to me as if I were a hotel bell boy or some sort of flunky.

I repeated my request for her to identify herself by signing in the book and she refused again and appeared indignant at being asked to identify herself. She told me to get her bags from her car.

I pointed out that I was an unpaid volunteer, working as a Red Sash out of the goodness of my heart. I reminded her that I was not a servant or a slave or a flunky. Most of this was only inside my head though. What I actually said out loud was that it was important to sign in the book for fire regulations because we needed to know who was in the building and how many. She sniffed and shrugged at the idea of fire regulations, then repeated her command for me to fetch her bags.

I refused.

She made a decision and turned away, then rushed quickly through the inner door, going further into the building and down the corridor. I couldn’t follow her because I was on my own at the reception desk and I couldn’t leave the place unmanned.

When the other Red Sash returned from his break I explained what had just happened and told him I was going to search the building to find the mystery woman. He stayed guarding the front desk.

I searched the building thoroughly and that woman was nowhere in any of the rooms which were accessible to me. This suggested that she had either somehow gained access to the private rooms where I couldn’t go or she was hiding in the women’s toilets. I couldn’t go in there either but I could keep an eye on the corridor in case she came out.

I never saw that woman again and I don’t know where she went.

Years later, when I had freed myself from Emin brainwashing and was moving on with my life, the thought occurred to me that she might have been the woman whom the Emin always referred to as “Lady Ethra”, the third person in Leo Raymond Armin’s “Triangle”. The woman who lived together with Raymond Armin and his wife. Their third partner. The North American accent and the approximate age and appearance were a close match.

I had never seen “Lady Ethra” except from a distance. Out of respect, had never stared at her, even though she was regarded as one of the most important people in the Emin. So I only had a very vague impression of her appearance. A youngish sort of woman with dark hair.

This extremely rude mystery woman who spoke to me as if I was a servant could have been her.

Case two: The Mystery Man

In my day job in 1980 I was working in a petrol station in South Wimbledon. I was on a nine-day shift rotation. I had to work three days on the morning shift, from seven a.m. to three p.m., then three days on the evening shift, from three p.m. to eleven p.m. Then I had three days off and then the cycle would begin again.

One night when I had finished my evening shift I went through the usual routine of turning off the pumps, turning the signs over to read “closed”, writing down the number of units sold and the money received for those units, cashing up, putting the “float” into the safe and locking it up. Then I made a cup of tea and turned off most of the lights, leaving just a small light in the cashiers’ booth where I could sit, drink my tea and unwind before going home.

As I sat there in the little cashiers’ booth, drinking my tea and reading my book, a car pulled onto the forecourt and the driver got out and started walking over to the booth. When he got to the booth he rapped on the glass to attract my attention. I looked at him ironically and shook my head. He wanted me to switch the pumps on. He had an American accent.

I told him “No”, the petrol station was closed. He tried to argue, to persuade, to cajole me into opening up the petrol station just for him, at half past eleven.

I was only paid to be there until eleven and the other bit, the cashing up and putting things away at the end of the night was unpaid work on my own time, so I was already being cheated by the management by making me work an unpaid bit at the end of each shift and another unpaid bit before the beginning of each shift. There was no way I was going to open up the whole petrol station just because this one bloke was too lackadaisical to arrive while the place was open.

I explained to him that South London had lots of petrol stations and some of them, such as the one at Nine Elms, were open all night.

He didn’t want to go looking for a petrol station that was open, he wanted me to open up this one. “No!” I said. “Yes!” he insisted.

He offered to bribe me with money. He said the management didn’t need to know. He said it could be just between him and me. I refused, I refused and I refused.

Eventually he could see that I wasn’t going to serve him. Then he did a very interesting thing.

He walked back in the direction of his car and then turned, came running towards the booth chanting the English clapping football chant which goes