The Delights of sitting on a Front Doorstep

 

There is something wonderfully freeing about waiting for a rescue lorry to come and pick up your car.

My car sits looking serene on the road, and only the most observant lying on their backs would notice the exhaust pipe which dangles down from the front of the vehicle.

I'm feeling a bit of a wimp. I couldn't reach under the car far enough to reach it. So my plan a) to bind it with gaffer tape and then to drive it slowly to a garage has not been possible; and Plan b) call the £40 rescue lorry is in place instead.

They had said that they would be there in half an hour, but that was over an hour ago.

I've been sat on the front door step all that time waiting.

It is wonderful sitting on a front door step. Everyone should try it at least once in their lives.

You get to see all sorts of unusual things. The invalid car for example which drives up the road negotiating the speed bumps as if riding the big dipper. The secondary school children walking home after their first day back after the long summer break; looking, despite the bad reputation of this particular school, subdued and studious. Perhaps this effect mostly achieved by the newness of their uniforms and their freshly ironed shirts, but even so the ones who walked by looked as if they were certainly going to give education a chance. No way were they ever going to end up sitting on their doorsteps!

People passing by don't know what to do with a person sitting on a doorstep. It is an aberration. A departure from the norm. They don't know whether to make eye contact or whether to look the other way. Most look the other way. This is great for the person sitting on a doorstep. You can observe characters, what people are wearing, and also the comings and goings of all sorts of unusual people. Spies should adopt it as a tactic! James Bond could have given up all those great death defying feats and learnt all he needed to know just by sitting on his doorstep.

When you are waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive you realise just how many other vehicles travel down your road. One pulls into a nearby parking space. Its occupants, two people, stare at me.

I listen for the sound of a lorry, looking by turns both up and down the road.

The shadow of the house is creeping towards the kerb. It is getting cold. Once it reaches the gutter I will go to my own car and sit inside it. It's amazing how quickly the shadow moves. I'm now thinking of being an insignificant dot on a huge turning planet whirling through the solar system.

"Are you waiting for someone?"

The woman startles me. She was one of the ones who had just been watching me from the parked car. She leans over the door of her car as I am jolted back from outer space.

"Yes," I answer.

"You're not Valda, are you?"

This is one of the delightful thing that can happen if you decide to sit on your doorstep, you can be asked all sorts of unusual questions. People will eventually talk to you. The world opens up. I wonder who Valda is. Could this be some kind of covert operation? Is 'Valda' the code word which will open some sort of secret world?

"No," I'm not Valda, I confess. The woman is disappointed, I am too. Though I can also see that she is relieved; Valda, I am certain, would have gone down in her estimation if she had actually been discovered sitting on some front doorstep.

The shadows creep.

Lower down the road the real Valda arrives for her rendezvous, but the meeting is too far away for me to witness their cause, which leaves me curious. By now the last school child has long since passed by. The invalid car returns down the road, its driver this time waving a cheery acknowledgement. I have sat there so long I have become part of the scenery.

It is cold. As the minutes tick into the second hour I go and sit in my car. Missing already the delights of sitting on my front doorstep.