Steve Canavan: Row over twig game really sticks in my throat

I’ll come to how this occurred shortly but first - as I was taught during my three-month creative writing course at Bristol University in 1997 (I got an A but it probably helped that I was dating the tutor; he was a lovely bloke) - let me set the scene.

I had, as has happened every single day during lockdown, been to the local park with my three-year-old Mary.

We go about 10.30am and have the same daily ritual.

First we feed the ducks with two rounds of bread. This may sound like a simple procedure but takes the best part of an hour because Mary is very particular about each duck getting its own piece of bread and so refuses to throw any if a duck who has previously had his mouthful of bread is in the vicinity. Given there are around 50 ducks in the pond this takes some doing. In theory I should enjoy this precious time out and sit back and chill on a bench, but given Mary throws the bread to the ducks while perched precariously on a loose stone right next to the deep water, it’s kind of hard to relax.

Next we head to the statues where we play the statue game. This involves us, in front of two real statues, pretending to be – you’ve guessed it, unless you’re really really thick - statues. So we take it in turns to stand still in some odd pose, while the other pretends they are on a day out in the park and spends several minutes studying the statue saying things like, ‘ooh, I’ve not seen this one before, it’s very pretty, I wonder if it will move if I tickle it under the arm’, etc, etc. Again this is another game that, when I came up with it, seemed fun. But, when playing it for the 37th day in a row, it has, I must confess, got ever so slightly tiresome.

After that – and I sense by now most of you are incredibly jealous of my heady exhilarating lifestyle – we go to an ornamental bench on the far side of the park, on which each arm-rest has the head of a lion carved on it. In a moment of stupidity on a walk long ago, I christened these lions Albert and Eddie, and so now we have to go and say hello to Albert and Eddie every day and check they are ok. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been having a full-on conversation with Albert or Eddie while a passer-by wanders past. They quite naturally wonder why I’m talking to a bench and, as I myself would do, edge slightly away – in some instances breaking into a light jog – and then no doubt returning home to tell their loved ones not to go near the park because there’s a nutter hanging about.

Anyway after we’ve done all these crazy things, it is – mainly because by this time we’ve been out for seven hours and it’s going dark – time to go home.

And this is when the incident referred to at the start of this drivel occurred.

On the way home, you see, I become Bob The Builder (which is, in case you’ve not interacted with a pre-school child for the last two decades or so, a popular children’s TV programme featuring a bloke who specialises in masonry – who’d have thought such a concept would become a hit show eh? – along with his colleague Wendy and their work vehicles Scoop the digger and Roley, a green diesel steamroller. It’s a bit like a cartoon version of Auf Wiedersehen Pet with less swearing and accents you can understand).

On the way back from the park, I’m Bob and Mary is Wendy, we each carry a small twig we’ve collected from the road, and then every so often stop at a wall to pretend we are fixing it.

Harmless fun, right?

Well, apparently not, for as we stopped at one wall and touched it with our twigs, I heard a man’s voice shout from above shout, ‘oi, can you get away from our wall’.

I looked up to see – and I’m not being unkind here, just giving an accurate description – an incredibly large gentleman (let’s just say that if he stood in front of your lounge window he’d block the sun out) with a bulbous nose and hair that looked like it’d been collected from a barber’s floor and stuck on his head in random fashion with Pritt Stick - hanging out of his upstairs window looking incredibly angry.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied cheerily. “I’m just playing a game with my daughter. She’s pretending we’re Bob The Builder.”

I figured the last comment, plus the fact my daughter is aged three (double-plus the fact we were holding a twig and not a pneumatic drill), might appease him but, a little like Chamberlain with Hitler, my faith was misplaced.

‘I don’t care what you’re doing,’ he bellowed. ‘Go and do it somewhere else’.

I was genuinely so taken aback that for a long moment I stood with my mouth hanging open, like a teenage lad at school asked to work out an improper fraction, then, slightly stung, replied, “are you serious? We’re doing absolutely no harm at all. I can assure you your brickwork is not being damaged by this small twig”. At this point I held up my tiny 10cm long twig, as if proving a point.

He wasn’t for backing down though. ‘Listen, I don’t care about your twig or your game,’ he yelled (I think he was having a bad morning). ‘If you don’t go and do it somewhere else I’ll come down there and move you my bloody self’.

If this man has a wife – which I doubt very much – what a lucky woman she is.

I was so annoyed I wanted to stand my ground and discuss it further, but decided it probably wasn’t best for Mary to hear her father embroiled in a heated row over a twig. So instead, shaking my head and tutting audibly, I scooped my daughter up and moved further down the street, where we continued to play.

My only hope is that there’s a bad storm this week, which blows over not only his front wall but his garage and most of his house too. Fingers crossed.