Chapter One: The wide Continuum

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There is a green anoraked boy standing in the small alcove at my front door. I don’t know who he is. I can see his shape though the distorting window glass pane. He is not knocking on the door or even looking in my direction. I open the door to see what he wants and he turns and looks at me with blank surprise. He has a round chubby face and he stares at me saying nothing.

He’s about eight years old.

I expect him to jump down from the step as if it is a game of hide and seek that he’s playing, but he does not. Instead he looks away from me and glances anxiously up the street.

‘Hello.’ I say. ‘Can I help you?’

He says nothing and I wonder if he’s understood. There is something about his face, a slowness of expression, an empty canvass.

That’s the moment when two women approach; his mother and perhaps his older sister. There are dragging heavily-loaded wheeled shopping bags behind them. They hold rolled newspapers in their hands.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ the woman says cheerily. ‘We’ve ask Tom to run along and stand there so that we don’t accidentally post a newspaper through your door.’

‘Oh,’ I say smiling gratefully.

She smiles back warmly.

‘Thank you so much.’ I say.

Disaster averted.

We have a problem with the letter box.

It’s hardly anything really; it’s just that the letter box doesn’t close properly; so after the newspaper had fallen heavily onto the floor, the letter box remains slightly open.

In a previous life it wouldn’t have given me the slightest concern. I would have picked up the newspaper, without even noticing the slightly opened letter box, and I would have sat down to read it.

Lazy halcyon days.

Now should anything come through the letterbox it triggers a crisis.
The teenager appears, no matter what I’m doing, and insists that I close the letter box.

Now!

Whatever has recently come through the door has to go into the bin.

Fliers are a nightmare.

The rows of tightly packed terraced houses that lace these streets must be so appealing for those who are distributing leaflets.

With doors so close together they can get through hundred of the things. Every fast food outlet in a five mile radius has posted several fliers through my door. We sometimes get three a day.

I can be digging in the garden when the anxious face of The Teenager appears at the back door and I’m summoned.

‘Something’s come through the letterbox,’ he’d say.

‘Well, can’t it wait?’ I’d ask.

‘No,’ he’ll say already tense with anxiety.

I have to take off my gardening gloves and gardening shoes, walk through the house to pick up whatever offending item has been pushed through the letter box, close the letter box flap, and then walk back through the house with the offending item held clear of any contact with clothes, walls or doorframes, in order to put it straight in the bin.

All the time The Teenager is watching me.

Watching my every move.

‘Don’t read it,’ he orders, ‘It only encourages them.’

I avert my eyes.

‘Don’t let it touch anything,’ he says. His eyes are watching me with a fierce intensity.

I daren’t let the leaflet touch anything.

‘Put it in the bin.’ I’m ordered.

I do so, like a marionette feeling all my strings being tightly pulled.

‘Now wash your hands.’

I comply.

‘Okay?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to sweep up now.’ He’s walking past me angrily to pick up the sweeper.

It will be hours before his equanimity is restored.

Should another flier come through the door then the ritual has to be repeated.
In The Teenager’s mind the air coming in through the letterbox from the streets outside is ‘contaminated’ and the leaflets are ‘dirty’. The house has to be cleansed afterwards for him to be able to restore his peace of mind.

Leafleteers has been astonished to find me running up the street behind them giving them back the leaflet that they have only just posted through the door.

‘Please no leaflets at number 5,’ I beg.

They look at me not understanding a word that I say and nod. No doubt I’m the crazy English woman they’ve been warned against.

‘Please no leaflets at number 5,’ I beg again.

I’m doing a mad mime in the street. I’m shaking my head and making a large cross with my arms.

The leafleteers grin with amusement.

I’m holding up five fingers, pointing to the leaflet and shaking my head.

The leafleteers smile before taking the offending leaflet from my hands and posting it casually through another door.

Then they shrug and walk away.

The Teenager is waiting when I return.

He is the line manager and he needs to know where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. He’s running a quick risk assessment.

‘I’ve just returned the leaflet,’ I explain.

‘Wash your hands,’ I’m told. I comply.

Luckily, The Teenager does not use the vacuum cleaner.

A fragile peace reigns.

So I am grateful for the boy who stood in my doorway and made sure that the free newspaper didn’t fall onto our hallway floor.

There was something in his mother’s warm smile. What was it? Sympathy? Understanding? Compassion? I wondered what mountains she had to climb for her son in order to reach her state of relaxed acceptance and peace of mind. I could see in her glance a warmth and acceptance of all on the wide continuum of human kind; and I felt for her the deepest gratitude.