Granny Annexe

VIRGINIA IRONSIDE on the horror of unannounced callers

ON HEARING the unexpected ring on the bell, Dorothy Parker was always said to cry: ‘And what fresh hell is this?’

It’s certainly what I scream to myself, at any unscheduled interference. Phone calls can be welcome. But knocks at the door that you’re not expecting – do they ever bring pleasure?

Every time I hear the unexpected knock on the door, my heart sinks. I usually stagger down the stairs, shouting like a mad old lady ‘I’m coming, I’m coming! Keep your hair on!’ Then I will examine them through the peephole, an activity that gets me nowhere since everyone looks the same through the fish-eye lens.

There’s the Amazon delivery man – not yours, because yours is expected. No, this man is carrying what appears to be a nuclear weapon wrapped in brown paper and wants to leave it in your house for your neighbour to collect later – a neighbour who is away for the entire month. Wanting to be friendly, and arguing that if the circumstances were reversed you’d appreciate it if your neighbour took custody of the atom bomb you’d ordered on line until you returned, you say yes – but after your leg has been broken in several places by tripping over the damned thing, you’re not so sure.

Then there are the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I have written in clear letters beside my bell the words ‘No cold calls or religious enquiries’ but it doesn’t stop those Witnesses from bludgeoning their way in. After arriving, gasping, at the door, I enquire coldly whether they can read their Bibles. They always say yes. Then I point sourly at my sign and say: ‘Then why can’t you read this?’ before slamming the door.

There’s the desperate motorist who’s been blocked in by a car and wants to know if it’s yours, and a gasman who, despite assuring him that you have to read your own meter these days (bearing a torch and contorting yourself into knots to get inside a small cupboard, just to read the figures every month) will not believe that you aren’t still registered with his company. Or the parliamentary candidate – or the seller of dodgy household goods. There’s the con-artist who claims to live down the road, have a mother in hospital but has no change to put in the meter or no money to go and visit her, and there’s the neighbour who claims there’s a ‘funny smell’ and wonders if his man can inspect your drains.

There are the early guests who don’t realise that while you might be ready to receive them at 7.30 you are not ready to receive them at 7.25, since you have only just stepped out of your bath, and the men from charities with lanyards around their necks, bearing photographs of people who look nothing like them. I’m never sure about those lanyards. I always suspect that if you were to lean forward too closely to examine their photographs, they might slip the thing over your head, like a Thuggee and strangle you.

Occasionally, however, it is a policeman. Recently one knocked at the door and I turned from a curmudgeonly householder into a welcoming, ingratiating and helpful member of the public, bustling him in and offering him a cup of tea. This time, the building site over the road had been burgled in the small hours. Could I help?

Sadly, I couldn’t, having abandoned my curtain-twitching activities by midnight, but it all reminded me of the occasion my father opened the door to a policeman in Kensington. Apparently they’d been transporting a prisoner from one station to the next and on the way he’d leapt out of the van and disappeared, Could they look around the house and garden? ‘Of course’ – but no sign. They said their goodbyes and left.

Ten minutes later, there was another ring on the bell. It was a man in grubby jeans and a stained T-shirt, who revealed he was an undercover plain clothes policeman who had stayed behind. If my father would go upstairs and keep watch out of the first-floor window, he would go down to the basement and check the garden again for the escaped villain.

After a quarter of an hour, hearing nothing, my father left his vigil and found that the ‘undercover policeman’ had vanished completely. Along with my father’s camelhair coat, walking stick, hat, scarf and a silver clock.

My advice is: never answer the door.

Virginia’s ‘Yes! I Can Manage Thank you!’ is now out in paperback (Quercus £7.99).