A fool

"'Ere, you, you can't leave this shit here!" said the middle-class middle-aged white man, waving his hand in derision at the recycling box and bag that sat in front of my home.

"Er, yes I can. It's getting collected tomorrow."

"No. It's a hazard."

I sighed, willing him to disappear somewhere (possibly to a low level of hell, or maybe IKEA in Croydon) and said, "It's not a hazard, it's next to our bin, it's impossible to trip over."

The man started waving his hands irately. "I nearly tripped over it."

"Oh, well the only way you could possibly trip over this lot is if you were clinging to the side wall of our house, walking sideways like a crab. Is that what you were doing?" I asked saracastically.

The man frowned at me. "I'm going to complain, you sarcastic bastard."

"Then complain."

"What?"

"Complain, and see what it gets you. I've got nowhere else to put this stuff. It isn't like I have a front yard or garden, is it?"

The man shook his head and said forcefully, "Then put it out later."

"I can't. It has to go out now, I'm off out somewhere and won't be back till late." A lie, of course, but I did have a valid reason for putting out the recycling early - I just didn't want to discuss it with him.

"You're an idiot!"

I was now beginning to get bored of this little man's tirade. "I'm not having this conversation anymore. If you want to continue it then you can talk to the door, because I'm closing it on you."

"But..."

"Goodbye!" I closed the door on him and heard him bellowing with rage. It was a string of incomprehensible profanities and nonsense. He was clearly having a bad day. And as he moved off down the street he continued bellowing, his voice fading with each step that took him further from my home

I suddenly see the sense in my blog. Better to get it on the page, even a computerised one, than ramble inanely like this fool!