I hear a knock on the door!!!

This is a major event in the day. In the week, come to think of it. What’s more, the neighbours are away and Big A & his wife are at work. I have a MYSTERY VISITOR!!!

I can’t begin to describe the magnitude of my excitement. I feel like Tony Blair when they found those portable WMD labs.

The thing is, we have two doors.

We use the side door. It opens onto the conservatory, which is convenient. You can leave your muddy boots there and chuck your coat on the hook.

We don’t use the front door. It opens onto the back of my stereo system, which is inconvenient. It’s been opened twice in the last five years. I now forget that it is a door at all, and just think of it as a different-coloured piece of wall.

So I open the side door and nobody is there. Booooo!!! There is nobody at the door after all. Working here on my own has finally driven me mad. I am hearing people at doors.

I stomp back to the desk, disconsolate. Hang on. There is a shuffling, then a lady walks past the front window. There IS somebody at the door!!! I wave frantically at her, but she does not see me. She is escaping!!!

I sprint into the kitchen and hammer on the window, waving and gesticulating towards the side door. She hears me now. Oh yes, she hears me. “Don’t go away!!!” I mouth. “Please!!! Other door!!!” (point, point, wave, point).

‘I must get a sign made up,’ I think, as I run to the conservatory. Mentally, I compose some creative copy, finally settling on ‘Please Use Side Door’. Pleased with my efforts, I throw open the door.

By this point I am breathless and panting. She takes an alarmed step back. Then she hands me a leaflet about Jehovahs Witnessism.

I feel like Tony Blair when they discovered that they were portable balloon-inflating labs after all.

But a visitor’s a visitor. Human contact!

“I’m interrupting,” says Mystery Visitor who is no longer Mystery Visitor.

“No!!!” I reply, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Anyway, there’s the leaflet. I won’t stop. I can see you’re busy”.

I glance around, wondering what evidence at all she has to support this. I’m not busy. Reading Porny Boy Curtis can wait. This is a real, live, in-the-flesh, human being.

“I’m sorry?”

“Did I say that out loud?”

But by this point, she is turning to leave. I jabber something about the weather. She starts to run. That last bit could just be my imagination. But I stand at the doorway, and hang my head.

I have been spurned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.