The Urchin’s Adventures, or: My Infinite Sympathy with Postmen

Yesterday I overdid it.  This was the opposite of the last Stewart Lee stand up I went to, where he said there was nothing there for anyone under 40, in a smiling and arch way, that excellent way he does.  I would say, that urchining it about the place, is a thing solely the preserve of persons under 40, and quite fit.  While out yesterday, and getting more and more tired, I kept bumping into tiny tykes, ten year olds with odd wheely baskets full of free newspapers they were dragging about up the hills for delivery, and saying to them: “Aren’t you exhausted?  This is very tiring, isn’t it?”  And without exception, them all looking at me weirdly and saying, “No, we’re fine, it’s fine,” before scampering off (yes, at a scamper, up a hill; my jealousy at their working bodies knows few bounds).

In case you wonder what I’m on about: my new Saturday job began yesterday.  Delivering leaflets for a local electrical company, singing the praises of their ability to refit your boiler, and fit you some solar panels etc etc etc.  What I completely didn’t factor in to this day of most excellent outdoor exercise, and opportunity to ruminate forthly on the philosophic aspects of life (blah blah) was that this part of Surrey is damn HILLY.  Really really hilly.  Its all either going up or coming down.  And however slight the curvature is in places, its flat virtually nowhere.  Every day I take Fluffhead in the pushchair down to town for errands, and its 10 minutes down the hill here, and then 15 minutes up again.  This is hard work with 4 pints of skimmed milk, tins, babymilk, and other stuffs under the pushchair.  I neglected to give thought to what it would be like to (basically) do that 15 minute walk with the equivalent weight on my back…but for over 6 hours.  I mean, I thought of it; but I didn’t really put wellie into that thought.  I should have.

Set out for 8.15 a.m., with water and an absolute load of leaflets and a hat (promised rain).  I thought how nice it was to get out of the house for a day and walk with the sky and the clouds and the trees and get some good air into my lungs (and not have to listen if Fluffhead became Tetchyhead).  For a while, I went back and forth, up a street and down a street, looking at everything with interest, listening to birds; mind peaceful and uncluttered, as promised.  Thinking, well this is quite easy and unbothersome.  My dad used to be a postman, for years.  Surely this is in my blood.

I was noticing all the different types of houses.  People have an amazing ability to personalise things which are more or less the same.  Changing a door or the colour of paint, or what bit of the beams you paint black or white (fake stockbroker Tudor, a lot of the fancier houses round here, left over from the early 1910’s-1930’s).  The variety of front gardens planned and done so beautifully: quite a treat to see.  I’m a very nosy person, so it was great to have an excuse to go right up to people’s front doors and look at their front gardens, or through into the back garden.  To get a glimpse of their houses insides through the letterbox (lots of proper wooden flooring in the older properties; some parquet tiles in the fancier houses).  A thousand different lives, different décor, snatches of conversation, shrieks of the spiritual brothers and sisters of Tetchyhead.

Two hours of this, and I’m feeling very fit and a bit puffed out, simultaneously.  I start to think that all these houses look the same; that I have done this house before – but no, the door is a bit different, the letterbox isn’t the same.  I start to notice that people in this country – or at least in this part of Surrey – don’t want to be visited by anybody, ever.  They are deliberately making their houses difficult to get to.

It’s either up stairs or down stairs to get to the houses.  Why is the land not flat?  Who decided it was a good idea to build a load of houses (now having bred like flies to cover the whole area, streaming up and down as far as the eye can see, through the trees) on such a load of inclines?  Who wants to live in a house with a breakneck set of steps leading down or up to it?  And why are they imagining it’s a good idea to pave them with the slippiest beige flagstones that grow a strange green mould?  Both the flagstones and the mould, even more so, become incredibly slippery when wet.  It started raining.  Its suddenly rather hard and slow going to just get down or up to these houses (depending what side of the street you are on).  (I start seeing visions of those inane ‘injured at work’ adverts.)

Not only this, but lots of people here seem to have designed their driveways and front gardens with quite a bit of malicious whimsy in mind.  The quantity of twisty-turny pathwayed drives; gravel to crunch through that walks like sand, you have to heave yourself through it, and cars parked right by the front door so you have to squeeze yourself between them to post anything through the letterbox...is astonishing.

Then there’s the letterboxes themselves.  Some of them are hidden; and a lot of them are cross.  I stop infront of a door after the obstacle course of the driveway, and there will be a sign, either professionally done (Don’tKnockIt.uk is a familiar one) or in biro that’s fading quickly from too much sun, and it will say: ‘No free newspapers or junk mail or leaflets, please.  Thankyou!’  They seem to imagine that being polite will stop it happening.  Let me tell you, when you just navigated a slippery and dangerous set of steps and an even larger hill to get there, and you have a weight of crap on your back…you don’t care about these signs.  You aren’t going to let them stop you doing your job.  You just climbed to this subterranean or blinking treehouse domain; you are going to put that damn flyer through the letterbox.  You aren’t going to ironically nullify your present existence by NOT doing it.  Sod that.  Even the shoutier signs (‘NO BLOODY JUNKMAIL!’) are not going to deter you.  (You’re just going to do it very quietly.)

But they hide.  I stood quite befuddled infront of several doors yesterday, looking for a nonexistent letterbox.  Before realising that there are unlocked outer doors that you slide to one side to get into a sort of small vestibule, the world’s tiniest atrium.  Here live people’s wellies and in one case, a very attractive pair of black female biker boots with multiple silver buckles, that looked to be my size.  (Yes, I considered theft; I am a terrible person and honest about it!  I also considered that there were a streetful of possible witnesses over the road, the actual owner of the boots might suddenly fling open the door and give me a heart attack, and I already had loads to carry let alone a pair of boots. And Most Importantly: what if those boots had a verruca or athletes foot type virus lingering in their depths.  Erk!!!  So my more sensible side prevailed.  Plus, sometimes I do do wrong things – then I remember I have a conscience and start to feel dreadful, which quite ruins the buzz of whatever it was.)  Anyway, you leave your missives (and charity bags, and Thomson Locals etc,) in this tiny space, which mostly has shelves.  And sadly abandoned tiny articles of children’s toys (a knight on a horse that had no head that I stepped on).  Lots of walking sticks.  Many pairs of Converse Allstars.  Lots of overcoats and jackets and children’s umbrellas of all colours.  Very trusting I thought, to leave all these things out where anyone can get to them.  (I think a lot of us may be casually criminally minded, like me; but in reality too timid and lazy to actually do anything.  There’s the English spirit!)

Those houses that had locatable letterboxes, be they embedded in walls, cleverly, or in the door, still don’t want any post delivered ever.  Close to half of them have these letterboxes so close to the floor that you have to kneel down to deliver anything.  You are over-weighted by your bag that swings round and hits you as you do this.  You creak about and your wet trousers tighten on your legs.  If you are wearing a rucksack, it overbalances you and you try to not bang your head on the door as you fall forward slightly.  A lot of the letterboxes have that strange broom effect inside.  They are stiff to open, and then you have to fold anything you have in half to be able to get it to withstand this spiky interlaced broom/hairbrush arrangement on the other side, to be pushed through.  (I believe this is for insulation, to lower heating bills.  Its also a bloody nuisance.)  Once you’ve done this, removing your hands through the stiff metal often comes close to skinning your fingers; it snaps back loudly once you’re done.  I am no longer surprised that many postman don’t even bother to deliver mail in the traditional sense anymore.  House after house of man-eating letterboxes and you’d just drop the mail by the door too.

That’s another thing. I repent of ever wanting to have a dog.  I had a fright more times than I can remember yesterday, with many different breeds of dog.  The very minute you come up the drive they start barking.  The second you open the letterbox (which, remember, you are doing with both your hands with the stiff ones – one to hold open the box, the other to fold the paper and push it through), they are jumping and barking frenziedly.  No exaggeration.  I got the impression I was being hunted by one group of terriers.  They actually succeeded in biting loose one half of the stiff brush on their side of the door; and when I pushed through the leaflet quickly and worriedly, they ripped it up.  Are they not fed?  What’s with the excitement with the paper?  But that’s not what repents me.  Dogs are dogs, they get excited.  I like their enthusiasm.  What repented me was the smell coming through so many of the letterboxes when I opened them.  Such a smell of fusty old dog I have never smelled before.  Are they dead in there?  Piled up in a rotting heap just inside the door where you can’t see?  Does anyone ever hoover?  What are they feeding these poor things??  Are they washing them ever??  Seriously, the smell got at me so many times I started to feel like it was stuck in my nose.  (I smelled it for the rest of the day.)  Oddly, I didn’t see one cat all day; and neither did I smell any cat houses.  You know the smell of an over catted house: that ammoniac smell.  Nothing.  Just overwhelming wet, dirty, dog smell.  Very interesting.)

At that point I bumped into our postman.  I had been going for four hours and all the houses and streets were starting to look like a 70’s ghost story:  they would just go on and on forever; if you turned round, it would be the same view as infront of you.  There was no getting anywhere.  That was the other strange thing.  I did feel as if I wasn’t going anywhere.  Because I was going a few paces along then downward or upward, a pause to deliver (and be confused about it), and then up or down again, a few paces along and then…again etc…I asked my local, Sean, how on earth he does it.  It was raining again, and he stood infront of me in shorts and a blue short sleeved shirt, hatless and ruddy cheeked.  And as peaceful as usual. They want to remove some of his pay and make him do more shifts, and while its pensionable, its less money.  He wasn’t happy; but in as smiley a way as usual.  I envy his temper.  He says the trick to any hilly round like this is to go up the left side of the road, and down the right.

I nod frowningly.  That makes sense…I think.  Topographically, or…?  I feel a bit addled now, and I ran out of water an hour ago.  He doesn’t take any, he is hale and hearty.  I follow his instructions.  But it doesn’t make any sense.  If I’m going uphill it’s harder than if I’m going downhill.  Obviously.  If I’m on the right or the left of the street makes no difference.

At one point, I come to a door that’s open, and rather than just throw a leaflet somewhat carelessly on the blue door rug, I call out, over the sound of a hoover.  I call again.  A voice tells me to come in.  I do.  I stand in the lightest, cleanest small hallway and look through into an amazingly spotless kitchen, painted primrose yellow and covered in sunflowers, as if the owner is a florist.  The hoover switches off and from a staircase off to the left comes the welcoming houseowner.  He’s just how I always thought Mr Pickwick would look, except in modern day clothes.  Like a happy and large professor dressed in many shades of blue wool.  He grins very warmly at me. I haven’t seen a person twinkle in real life till now.  I can’t help grinning back even though I’ve seen far too many horror films and also wonder if it’s a trap and he’s about to put his leather apron on and fetch the chainsaw.  I stay near the door. 

He is very chatty.  He sees the illustration on the leaflets of a house bedecked with its new solar panels, and tells me about the manufacture of such.  And why I really should go to Fribourg, in Switzerland.  Though its no place for a vegetarian, I’m told, as they do an awful lot of cooked pork there.  But the Black Forest, I should try the Black Forest; such a good people, the Germans, so clever.  I agree.  I have no idea how we came to be talking about Germany.  He tells me how he has restored his house from scratch, with the front door being a particular passion and having taken him all year: stripped, sanded, stained glass, leading, painting.  It does look…lovely.  Its also blue.  I nod along to everything, getting a piercing urge to ask him to adopt me and give me a less exhausting Saturday job.  I don’t.  I’m not sure why, as I am starting to feel a bit desperate by now.

The last two hours are spent mostly watching where my feet go, so I don’t fall over on the stupid steps.  Everything has become full of vividity. I am very tired, and have a headache.  I have a sudden and overwhelming conviction that I actually shan’t do this again, as my back and legs are going to kill me for the next two or three days, and I am already tired and achy from Fluffhead Life anyway.  I am meant to be filing quietly, I’m pretty certain of it.  Something orderly and indoorsy, and related to words.  It’s at this juncture that a man explodes angrily out of his house and yells at me: “’Scuse me!  Can’t you read??  No junkmail!!”  He is bristling at the beginning, but by the time he’s finished he’s not.  He looks at me, and I can see from his face that I am looking a bit bedraggled and wet, and alarmed.  In fact, I catch myself thinking I might cry and I know it’s on my face, as he ends with: “…So next time, just…don’t, eh?”  And he smiles at me lopsidedly.  I say sorry in a small voice.

But by then, I really am tired, and I really do ache, and I spend the next half a street trying to not cry; then I get even tireder and can’t quite remember why I was thinking of it in the first place.  I marvel at the automatic action of the legs, which whilst throbbing unkindly, are doing the business.  Abruptly, the street ends, and I decide I am done too.  I don’t do the other side of it either.  I just set a course for home, and watch the ground till I get there.

Back home, Stanley has missed me, as he does when I am not in the house (though he’s incredibly self sufficient when he knows I am about).  Fluffhead sleeps, so Stanley talks loudly and quite a lot to me while I automatically run a bath and discover on undressing, that I have a couple of ginormous blisters that (amazingly) I wasn’t aware of while out.  He washes my back, and talks on.  I am not processing much of what he is saying.  I interrupt him and ask for giant chocolate buttons.  He fetches some and feeds them to me.  I feel like a happy seal.

I start to feel more human again about an hour later.  It occurs to me that as well as being too tiring, this job has had a funny effect I didn’t expect:  it made me feel like a stranger in my own area.  All that going from house to house and never going in (except Mr Pickwick – and then I felt like begging, for some reason), made me feel like a starving waif with my nose pressed against the window of the sweetshop.  But I do live here.  In the nicest house I ever lived in, in a lovely street.  I am very lucky, and I do live here.  For once, I am not an outsider of something nice.  I don’t want to feel like that from a job.

So no more of that particular urchining for me.  The search is still on.  A Saturday job.  In the meantime: where’s the Deep Heat, ‘cos my calves are killing me, seriously they are.