The Gateley Road Mafia

The doorbell rang this evening. Curious, I thought, though perhaps my dear husband had forgotten his keys.

"Are you Emma Sundt. living at the First Floor Flat?"

"Ummm ... yes? Why do you ask?"

"Well, your recycling was left all along our road."

"Oh, well we did a bit of a sort out this weekend, but we put it by the door as per usual, not down your road." said the blonde girl, sweetly.

"Well, there has been a lot of fly tipping around here lately, and we are trying to stop it. The police and the council are involved."

"Well" said the blonde girl, still smiling sweetly but being very firm, "I would be pleased to give you my phone number, and would be happy to speak to the police about how I left my recycling by my front door as I am permitted to do. Though clearly, for some inexplicable reason, some people think it should be strewn down your road."

And so the conversation went on. As these situations tend to go, they clearly saw that I am not the fly-tipping/yob/mean type, and we began sharing stories of how various challenging things sometimes go on around our respective houses. For example, we have one bin between 4 flats, and have tried to get another one from the council in vain. Oh, and the time my car got broken into (a long time ago, my car was left in the P&G carpark 3 years ago now).

They were a nice couple of guys too, clearly doing their fierce civic duty by addressing such travesties of justice in their neighbourhood. We shook hands, and did proper introductions once I had verbally redeemed myself, and they even kindly brought our recycling back. One even gave me his card, I guess he felt it was a bit uneven, what with him now having my name, address, mobile number and email address! Perhaps shoe size also?!?!

Still feel a bit tense at being confronted on my own doorstep for something I didn't do, but pleased to feel so confident in my own innocence and pleased to have potentially cracked into a local circle of community minded people. At last, a chance to grow even more into the Margot Ledbetter mould!!