Say what?

I am, for the moment at least, currently commuting from a sleepy to the point of narcolepsy station that somehow escaped the Great Beeching Butchery, possibly because of it's very insignificance or possibly because he once has a bunk up in the Gents and formed a ramrod attachment to the place. The station could not be much smaller or simpler unless it was mounted on a board in an attic somewhere with OO scale trains running through it.

It does, however, retain a certain charm and the ability to spring a few surprises if you look carefully. Standing waiting for my train I noticed this collection of chocolate bar wrappers neatly folded and lodged behind a pipe on the platform. My first reaction was that it was a very neat litter lout, or a person too lazy to walk to the bin but with an obsessive compulsive disorder. (Why is it called an obsessive compulsive disorder, surely the condition of somebody who is compelled to have everything arranged just so or is a neatness freak should be an obsessive compulsive order?).

Or even a bored schoolboy.

Other explanations suggest themselves. The first is that it is as sort of message, either simply conveyed through folding the reports strategically to spell out a word on the vertical - this is a great idea but not secure and also limits you to the alphabet available at the confection counter. More probable is that the colours used are some of code, like signal flags.

As to what the message might be about, while international espionage or the doings of a secret order of the Knights Templar are possibilities, more likely is that it is a coded message used by the sort of gentlemen who wish to arrange clandestine meetings in railway stations ('Beechers’) and find simply recording the time and date of their next visit on the back of the loo door too risky, and that arranging assignations through txt, twitter or Facebook lacks romance.

Most likely it is a board schoolboy, but you just know that what started as an absent minded action has now developed into a challenge - how many wrappers can he lodge before they are removed or, worse, replaced in a different order?