Knock, Knock, Who's There?

Knock, Knock, Knock... ding!

I picked up the intercom and answered (I know it sounds pretentious but I have this in the studio, it lights up because I wear headphones to paint and can't hear the front door)

'Hi Sir, I'm not selling anything' then why are you here I thought?

'I'm here to check if you have received your grant. I'm not selling anything' I'll be the judge of that young man. I'm often suspicious of these things after a friend of mine brought a set of hankies from a doorstep salesman only to find that the hankies were in fact old knickers trimmed to shape. On the same note I remember another weird event when we discovered a gardener in the front garden trimming our bushes so to speak, only we didn't have a gardener (still don't, I trim my own bush) but he demanded payment for snipping a few things off without our permission so I speak from experience when I said to our doorstop dandy 'I'm not interested thankyou'

'But I need to check you have claimed so I can tick you off our sales list.'
Oops, schoolboy error I think, 'I'm really not interested now thank you very much'

'Ba*tard'

An efficient response that I'm sure was not in his official training manual and he sauntered away in his luminous unmarked jacket with his dodgy I.D. It got me thinking on how much of this you encounter daily and put up with. Now, what I would have liked to have done is chase his ass up and down the street before pushing his clipboard sideways in any suitable orifice for insulting me in my own home but what I did instead is that typical British thing of accepting it. I'm not always like that though but you do find that if you rise to every occasion that life soon becomes a little jaded. Instead I like to have a little fun in these situations.

A few weeks ago I was in a well known supermarket that sounds similar to the fictional Lesco's, when at the checkout I found I was the gooseberry in a three way discussion that was occurring whilst I was being served. I don't mind a bit of chat but this was full on 'I'm not paying attention to you whilst I serve you' chat. Items were rang through twice and I spent most of the time looking at the back of a head. SO I decided to retaliate, at suitable moments I joined in with their private conversation. 'Ooo, did you really, sounds shocking, tell me more', 'was the goat OK?', 'Did you finally get the handcuffs off the dog?'. It works too, as soon as they feel they have been rumbled they become the insulted and the shutters come down. The remaining items are then processes under a steely smouldering gaze.

So today if you get any of this malarkey going off, and there is a lot of it, join in, it's fun and you end up smiling instead of walking away feeling a little insulted. Now where's that clipboard? I have a door knocker to sort out...