Walking down my street this morning with baby and shopping. Gentle drizzle, pushchair wheels sticking. Jerked from my daydreams by a series of thuds and bangs and shouts.
I stop and I look up. There’s a short woman inside her house hammering at the window pane, almost trying to scale it. It’s one of those long, fixed panes with a small hinged window at the top. Surely she can’t be trying to climb out of it?
“Ai! Ai! Ai! Yass. You! Stop! Stop! Ai! Ai!”
I stare completely blankly. Are my trousers on fire or something? I check. No, can’t be that.
“Ai! Yass. There a man next door. Who is? Itsa man. He next door..”
I look at the house next door. Sure enough, there’s a man standing in the sheltered doorway. I know who he is. He looks at me with an expression of contemptuous resignation, clearly willing me to pass it on to the excited woman. I do.
“You live here, don’t you?” I say.
“Yes.”
“He lives there,” I say to the woman.
“There a man, there a man. He been knock at door.”
“Yes, he lives there,” I reiterate, beginning to get bored of the situation.
“Who is the man? There a man! There a man!”
“I think she wants to know who you are,” I tell the man.
He gives me another one of those looks. I pass it on.
“I think she wants you to show yourself,” I add helpfully as he begins to step out of his doorway.
The two of them lock eyes and there’s no sign the woman is going to calm down. So I shove the pushchair forward and disappear, leaving them to it.
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I read this and know I did the right thing moving to the country.
Puss
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