Categories: life-and-musings
Date: 08 June 2008 19:23:09
I am an awful neighbour, apparently. No, scratch that, I am a [deleted] awful neighbour.
Picture the scene. A peaceful Sunday evening at Rosamundi Towers, I'm here on my own, planning dinner and pottering, when hark! there is a knock at the door.
Up I get and answer it - there is a man who I have never seen in my life before, and a small boy.
"Hello, I'm your neighbour right on the ground floor, we've locked ourselves out and my son's trapped his hand in the door. Can we come in and run his hand under the cold tap?"
"I've lived here ten years, and I've never set eyes on you in my life," thinks me. "And why, of all the apartments in this block, have you knocked on my door?"
"I'm sorry, I'm here on my own, I can't let you in," I say, as Awful Warnings from the police start hurtling through my mind, about lone women who are robbed or Vilely Set Upon when they heed a stranger's tale of woe and let them into their house.
"Well, what a [deleted] awful neighbour you are! [Deleted] [deleted], really [deleted] neighbourly."
"I'm sorry, I'm here on my own, I can't let you in," I repeat, as they storm off downstairs, the boy choosing this moment to start wailing.
It's only just occurred to me that I could have said "wait there," shut the door and come back with a tea-towel run under the cold tap.
Sigh.
[Edit: I have just done that. I have no idea why I have never seen this man or this boy before, since they are giving every appearance of actually living there - someone has let them in, and boy has cold compress on finger. I apologised profusely, brandishing soggy teatowel* and the woman said "don't worry, you hear such awful stories, especially after what's just happened down the street."
*It makes a change from frozen fish, I suppose].