House rules

I can't believe that I wrote this eight years ago this month......time for the spellcheck then.

We had ample time to hide if we saw the smelly newspaper delivery lady before she got up the driveway to ring the doorbell .

It was a scary time for us as young children. The shuffling, bag carrying,waterproof coat clad figure took on a whole demoniac quality when in fact she was probably someone's beloved granny.

So why did they not tell her that she smelt like wee-wee? My mother had let her into the house on a single occasion to use the toilet which must have set us up as as a soft touch. It was not as if we saw her on a rare monthly magazine delivery but she was down our street and up our driveway every single weekday bringing the local evening paper.

One of us kids would be on watch. Not too difficult as 21 Westgarth Gardens was a modern house in the early 1970's and the lounge where we would watch TV after school had a large floor to ceiling height picture window as was the fashion of that time. This had an unrestricted view of the front approach.

The "duty child" would usually be parallel to the window rocking attentively on the vinyl footrest, called a pouffe in those days with no recriminations for frequent use of the word. A strict rota was intended to minimise the risk of the lookout losing concentration or being distracted by the usual tea time viewing of Blue Peter (We were never an ITV Magpie house), Top Cat cartoons and Hectors House.

However,a momentary lapse and it was invariably panic stations as we would dive for cover away from the window trying not to cause a wave of moving air to betray our presence by causing the curtains to flap and wave.

Our mother also participated. The door to the house was on the side from the driveway. It was mainly obscure glazed. We could not resist heightening our part terror, part excitement, part inquisitiveness by trying to get a glimpse of the squat and broad figure by peeking out of whatever hiding place we had taken towards the bright hallway.

Of course, detection and avoidance was easy in the longer afternoons of the summer. The late season and winter campaign was much more difficult. There were many very close calls in the murky autumnal and winter evenings as the newspaper lady assumed a cloak of invisibility which activated as soon as she turned from the public pavement into our gateway. If the doorbell rang without warning of her approach we would freeze, statue-like wherever we were at the time. Typically most of the house lights would be on so it was much less convincing to pretend that no-one was in.

If caught out in the open space of the hallway and with no prospect of reaching cover there was always the risk of casting a shadow across the door and undoing a long campaign of resistance.

The lady could be identified through the blurring effect of the glass by an awkward and obviously discomfort induced fidgeting from one leg to the other. This took on the appearance of a surreal jig and I am not entirely sure now if she also hummed or sang in order to take her mind off the desperate feeling of needing to go and very soon.

With no response from the house, even though she must have had suspicions about our tactics, she would let out a disgruntled sound as the newspaper came through the letterbox.

Our road was quite long and if all our neighbours had gone into hiding and silent mode like ourselves then I dread to think what action the lady had to take to relieve herself if the feeling got too excruciating to cope with.

We did feel bad about our behaviour not at the time but only many years later when we came to realise that a small act of kindness can go a long way in someone's life not to mention in the avoidance of any bladder related complaints.