Blown away

I needed to get out fairly early to finish delivering leaflets for my excellent MP, Andy Sawford.  This meant leaving the house before it was light and walking around the neighbouring streets around 0745.  Funnily enough, there weren’t many other people about.

I don’t want to be a postman when I grow up!  Just a flavour of tramping around, pushing leaflets through stiff letterboxes, quickly withdrawing one’s fingers when a dog grabs the leaflet from the other side, and bending down to letterboxes set a few inches above floor level, was enough to persuade me that my career lies elsewhere. However, it is quite interesting having the excuse to walk up the path to lots of front doors and peak into their front rooms or gardens.

I noticed that many of the houses built at around the end of the nineteenth century, like my own, have the same make of letterbox as in my front door. Some late Victorian ironmonger was making quite a killing, no doubt, by supplying these to the builders of new houses.  And some of the paths I walked, have the same tiles that cover the few steps to my front door too.

Some of these houses, built pretty much identical c120 years ago have gone a bit to wrack and ruin whereas others have retained their style and quality, and yet others have been modernised almost beyond recognition.  Like their owners over the decades, some have prospered and some have fallen into some disrepair.

I played the game of wondering how the inhabitants might be intending to vote as I pushed the Labour leaflets through the doors.  Without more information I cannot tell how often I was right. I met one or two people and gave them the option of turning away my leaflets. One, a well-dressed woman politely took the leaflet, seemingly with some enthusiasm, another, a man doing some decorating, said that Labour propaganda was the last thing he wanted (I wondered whose propaganda was the first thing he wanted). One man, welcomed me with ‘Oh good! We’ve run out of toilet paper’ to which I replied ‘Happy Christmas! You’ll find this much softer than the Tory newsletter’ which did get a grudging smile from him.

It was a mild morning, but a windy one.  As I approached some front doors, the wind blew long-dead, long-brown, long-crisp leaves around the front porches.  The lid of a bin full of ‘rubbish’ for recycling blew open with a loud snap and a cardboard cereal box went scudding up the street as the wind caught it.  Was it binmen-day today, I wondered? Not usually, but then Christmas changes these things. As I walked home I noticed that my street was now full  of recycling bins and so I put out my own – almost full with Christmas paper, empty wine bottles and lots of cardboard.  What a tale our rubbish tells of us.

Back home at 9  I wait for the engineer to arrive at 10 to fix the solar panels on the roof – one of the worst investments I ever made. At 0930 he calls to say he is ill and won’t be coming until the New Year.  I wonder whether he is ill or whether his recycling bin is full of last night’s wine bottles after a party at his house? At least my early walk has blown any cobwebs away.

A little later a family walk at Stanwick Lakes confirms that it is indeed windy!  Several hundred Golden Plover look spooked but I don’t see any Peregrine that might have done the spooking. Maybe they just feel a bit windy.

[registration_form]