I’m trapped by the village WhatsApp

I live in a village in Oxfordshire. Before we moved here, a WhatsApp group was set up to help the community navigate the pandemic. It was, other villagers tell me, a lifeline. But the village WhatsApp is still going. No longer a herald of government diktats, it is now a busy forum with photos of abandoned parcels, a slow cooker in an unknown kitchen, someone’s cat staring blankly at me, and, most worryingly, a snap of the village playground littered with beer cans.

There are village announcements too, stories of the occasional lost dog and items that people don’t want to flog but are happy to give away. I have used it several times to rid myself of the odd chair and once got hold of an emergency plumber when we found ourselves ankle-deep in drain water on a Saturday morning.