"Be Carefull"

And we are not the only ones. Some nights when walking I push on the spring-loaded flaps of letterboxes with my finger to see how many are de-sprung. The answer is : so far, only one.

Not many of us are in a hurry to relieve postmen of personal responsibility for their own digits.

There is no doubt letterboxes can be dangerous. Not only for the postman, as you shall see. I have a letterbox story of my own which illustrates this very well. To relate this story I must take you back to February, 1998.

The story is recorded in my diary, which proves it to be factual, and here it is:

Tuesday 3rd February 1998

Last night, we saw these words written in felt pen on a row of letterboxes outside some flats in Queen Street, Norwood:

"Police are patrolling these letterboxes as faeces are being placed in some of the boxes so be carefull".

The message was placed on the road side. not the flats side, that is, it was on the delivery side and not the faeces recipients' side. This makes you wonder who is being warned to be "carefull". Is a watchful sympathiser warning the faeces dumper to keep an eye open for the police? It would seem so.

So there you have it, a salutory tale from 1998. Of course such things are less likely to happen these days.

It would be a foolhardy public nuisance indeed who would attempt to squeeze a turd through one of those spring-loaded flaps.

Autumn Ramblings

It's the last day of autumn, here. We walk to the shops.

We cross Portrush Road and walk down Percival Street, past the hole in the ground that was once Clayton Aged Care Home. The street trees are not very old. Under them, on the footpath, are shiny red ovate leaves that look like they've been punched out of leather. Some have bright yellow edges, others have startling green veins.

It irritates me that I don't know the name of these trees. That won't stop me from calling them Manchurian Pear. Because that's what I think they are, and I have my reasons.

Now we have turned the corner on to Queen Street. It's quite dark, for two thirty in the afternoon. That's because the street is lined with huge plane trees. At least I think they are plane trees, and I have my reasons. The footpath is littered with fallen plane tree leaves, as big as poppadoms, and as crunchy. The colour of these is ordinary dead leaf brown, but that is something that happens to them after they have fallen off the plane trees.

On the trees, the leaves are a different brown entirely. The glowing brown of rust, the curdling brown of yellow and the fading brown of green. The colour of snakes, the colour of something being not quite right with your eyes, the colour of menace.

Fortunately, we soon cross this street into Wall Street.