250 words. Not much time. A head full of gibberish.
Somehow the sight of an empty page scares all my words and good intentions away . . .
At the doctor this morning I looked out of the window (the waiting room looks into an internal quadrangle of raised beds and weeds) and watched a single strand of spider silk thrumming in the wind. By the time I go home I had forgotten all about it. However, it has just returned.
Just before going to the doctor the door bell rang. It was a representative from a local builder, energised by sunshine and the desire to fill his wallet at my expense.
Julia listened to him, because she does. He has a job to do, so it’s only fair to listen. However, he kept going and she had to step in and ask him to stop as we were about to go out. She asked him three more times and he kept going on. She even gave him her phone number because she is too nice to cold callers. He kept going and trying to organise a call, either in five minutes, or later in the day.
To be fair, you have to be persistent when you are selling, and I couldn’t fault him from that point of view. However, I didn’t want to be late for the appointment at the doctor.
I went to the door. He started to tell me he would like to clear the moss off our roof.
“Why?” I asked.
He said that some people didn’t like the look of it.
“Well I don’t mind it and my wife has already told you we need to go out so please stop and go away.”
It is important here to repeat that I said “go away”. I did not use a very tempting alternative, I was calm and restrained.
“Well,” he said, in the manner of a Victorian matron, pouting and gathering his skirts around him, “there’s no need to be rude.”
I pointed out that I wasn’t being rude, just telling him to go away because we had to get ready to go out and he’d ignored Julia’s previous attempts to ask him to leave.
I find there’s a lot of this about these days – people seem to think that you should listen to them and do what they want just because they keep on talking. It seems to be a common doorstep technique these days. It’s the technique used by a conman – keep talking and hope that people will be too polite to say no.
Sometimes you have to stop them. Sometimes you have to say no. I have also been known to ask people “What’s it got to do with you?” when they ask personal questions.
Yes, it’s “conversation” to some people, but some just ask too much. I lack the linguistic skills to fend them off, and if a couple of attempted evasions don’t work, I just ask. They soon get the idea.
However, I don’t see it as being rude. If it’s acceptable for a man to knock on my door without being invited, or for someone I don’t know to ask personal questions, surely it’s acceptable for me, after several ineffectual attempts to put a stop to it, to be blunt.
Everybody then knows where the line has been drawn.
I didn’t swear, I didn’t make any personal remarks, I just asked him to stop and told him to go away.
I’m not going to ask whether you think I’m right or wrong, but I am going to ask if anyone has a better way of dealing with it.
It’s a kestrel on his shoulder.
