OK, it's official, I need my cotton-picking head examined.
Foot feeling ever so much better, especially wearing a different pair of walking shoes. Well, it's a nice evening. The big houses along the main road are still to do, I'll just take my bike out and run round them. Start off very well, including one householder coming out to discuss the relative state of the parties, assuring me that he always votes SNP.
Then, on someone's garden path, I mis-step ever so slightly. Hardly at all. But it forced me to bend my right foot.
Eeeeeyyyyyaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
I don't know what I stirred up but I suspect a half-healed fracture of the distal fourth metatarsal. Two paracetamol further on and I'm still struggling. But, like an idiot, "I've started so I'll finish."
I run the bike up the steep driveway of
a big house whose owners I know slightly (I nearly bought their previous house, though I confess that was worth less than half their present mansion's purchase price, some things are just not meant to be known), and overbalance at the top. Rather than steady myself using the now incandescent right foot, I allow myself and the bike to collapse in a heap. I hope nobody saw
that little performance.
Two or three houses further on was a real mystery. I thought at first it was a disused driveway, perhaps to a house with a less steep entrance elsewhere, but then I realised it was a house I hadn't noticed before. A huge, stone house built right back from and above the road, with an elaborate series of landscaped paths and steps and terraces leading to a grand front door. Apparently derelict and unkempt. A new recycling bin (delivered about six weeks ago) was untouched by the gate. The driveway was blocked with a small fallen tree, which looked as if it might have been placed there deliberately.
So my Enid Blyton childhood reactivated itself, and I parked the bike and took a leaflet in my hand, and negotiated the fallen tree. As I apporached the house I could see that the windows were dirty and not obviously lived in, and one of them was broken.
This house, by the way, if in good order and well presented, could be pushing the £1 million mark. The houses round about are all in very good order and one changed hands in 2006 for over £850,000.
As I neared the front door, I could see a note, about A4 size, taped to the door above the letter box. It was handwritten, and encased in plastic. It said "The Firs. Robbie."
So I posted their leaflet into the Robbie family's letter box and returned to the street and my bicycle. This was just totally weird. Perhaps even more so now I've looked at Google's street view and realised that a year ago when these pictures were taken the fallen tree wasn't there and the driveway looks relatively navigable. Clearly, there is gossip here I'm not (yet) party to.
Well, a 45 minute job took about an hour and a half, but it's done. If I believe the co-ordinator that he persuaded a fit young guy to do the two particularly hilly roads with the big houses and long drives, the village is leafleted.
I've had about six separate election communications fromn the Tory incumbent, all of them delivered by the postman. God knows what that's costing him. I've decided I hate Tories.
Rolfe.
It's a long time since I did any serious radiology, but I'm not that dumb. I know an intact metatarsal when I see one.