Hot pasties, baked beans, massive bags of potatoes and mouldy muffins – the strange shopping list in a mysterious series of deliveries that has puzzled a pair of pensioners.
Carrier bags full of food, complete with receipts, were continuously left outside Barbara and Thomas Gliddon’s Winslade Road home for a week in April, and the deliveries resumed at the weekend.
The only possible lead is the sighting of an older man – leading to the theory it is someone with dementia who remembers delivering food in his youth.
“It started in April,” said Sidmothian Barbara, 71. “We were being left carrier bags full of food and paper bags with hot pasties, sausage rolls and all sorts in. It stopped for a while.
“It’s not only fresh food. There’s tinned food, and there are receipts from where it’s all been bought – Spar, Lidl, Co-op, Shauls Bakery – he’s been all over town and he’s even paying for plastic bags!
“We’ve had tins of beans, tinned steak pies, condensed milk, Kenco coffee that’s a fiver a tin.
“We had some muffins that were mouldy as anything. The receipt said they were a week old. They went straight in the dustbin.
“We don’t know what they might have done to the food. Sometimes he leaves notes saying to check it.
“One time we got seven big bags of potatoes. The police said we could eat them.”
Deliveries have also been left outside their next-door neighbour’s home. They have donated the tinned goods to the Sid Valley Food Bank.
Barbara, who was a housewife and a shop assistant, while Thomas, 80, worked as a semi-skilled engineer, added: “We have no idea who this is. We don’t know where they’re coming from or why they’d do it. The deliveries are coming at any time of day.
“There’s no reason why someone would leave food for us.
“We reported it to the police and they’re looking at the receipts to try to work out who it is. I spoke to the neighbours and one saw an old boy go away but wasn’t really sure; says he went down the road. He could have gone anywhere.”
PCSO Dave Keeler said it was not a police matter but confirmed he was making enquiries.
Do you know who the mystery shopper is? Email stephen.sumner@archant.co.uk
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