Published: 17 July 2013

By PAVAN AMARA

WEST Hampstead, you are under attack… from cucumbers.

Mystery surrounds a trail of the green vegetables which has appeared in the north west of the borough. Cucumbers have been popping up on the West Hampstead Thameslink, on walls and on pavements over the last week. The pattern was only discovered when people began photographing the out-of-place veg and posting the pictures to Twitter.

Jonathan Turton, who runs the West Hampstead Life blog, published them all to show that the discovery of cucumbers in the streets might be somehow connected.

The first cucumber “sweating in its own squidge” on the platform at West Hampstead Thameslink station.

Then another clingfilm wrapped green was sighted outside a block of flats in Mill Lane. Another was left stuck in a bush running soft in the midday sun.

This week there were more sightings, again, on the platform at West Hampstead station, and more were seen lying on walls around West End Lane.

Anna McGilvray, 26, was coming to West Hampstead from her job in the City.

“As I got off the train I saw this cucumber lying there," she said. "It was a bit of a health hazard because I could have tripped over it. It was such a random thing to see that I started laughing, and then some of the other commuters started laughing. It just looked so hot and pathetic lying there in the middle of the platform, like it was sunbathing or something. I was surprised at all the sightings, it would be very north London if a cucumber became our version of the Loch Ness monster, especially if it was from Waitrose or something.”

Eugene Regis, 37, was the next to spot one when he returned to his Mill Lane flat after work on Thursday.

He said: “I was not tempted to take it in and make sandwiches out of it. I didn't know how long it had been there, but it looked a bit mushy by the time I saw it. Also, when I'd nipped to the supermarket a bit earlier, there were no cucumbers left, which adds to the mystery."

West Hampstead Life blog creator Jonathan Turton revealed the pattern on his website.

“Twice is a coincidence, but three times is a trend,” he said.

“If there has to be a craze this summer then why not cucumbers? It is a bit of a strange thing to do though. At first I thought it was a marketing ploy. That all changed when someone contacted me to say he'd spotted a man, with jet black hair, well tanned, fairly short, and well dressed, a bit like an office worker. The man had apparently just dropped a cucumber on the platform as the train pulled up. That's a bit suspect."

He added: “There's a new organic vegetable delivery business in West Hampstead too, but these are cucumbers with clingfilm on, so that rules them out too. But if we have to have a craze, then cucumbers are a good option. At least we can make Pimms with them. It's a very English summer craze in that sense. We've now had another sighting on Fenchurch Street, so maybe cucumbers are spreading from West Hampstead towards the east.”