- This wonderful Christmas Morning in Switzerland -- a
Brown Christmas, thank Life, as it had rained overnight! -- I awoke to
look if the neighbour's cat had been taken in overnight or might still
be wandering around looking for his breakfast. To my delight, he was no-where
to be seen, so I knew he was probably still sleeping warmly with the kids.
All was well in my world!
-
- Too, it was not only well, but actually better! -- the
little sign I had laboriously made to paste under my doorbell, saying "Bitte
Klopfen!" -- "Please Knock!", was not there any more, someone
had once again taken it down -- and, again, without first asking my prior
permission, of course! I was delighted!
-
- Now that little sign was and is a sometime thing, created
out of necessity for my own sanity's sake : I do not like the sound of
my doorbell, far too loud in my one-room, "bachelor's" apartment,
and its stentorian "Binnnnggg-BONNNNGGGG!!!" is loud enough to
"awaken the dead", the phrase resounding in the old English song
about one John Peel, a perhaps better-left-unsung infamous old fox-hunter
and his"View-Halloo!" as he sighted some hapless fox and went
after it with his own unpleasant eminence, led by packs of slavering hounds
and no doubt large, obesely-overweight, florid-faced and sweating, red-coated
English gentry huffing and puffing on their overburdened horses as they
charged self-righteously behind the desperately- running, hungry fox, their
well-fed thoughts already on later dinner, Sirloin roast with Yorkshire
Pudding, Port Wine and many pompous toasts to "Her Majesty" amid
much harrumphing, in self- justifying Celebration of Reunification of their
Buttocks after a strenuous ersatz-war to the enduring glory of the Widow
at Windsor, as Kipling might have put it.
-
- So I disconnected my doorbell and hung out the little
sign, "Please Knock", instead.
-
- Alas, someone -- not the neighbour kids, they are far
too nice to do anything like that, even in jest -- has taken it into their
heads to do me the ever-recurring minor disfavour of removing my little
sign.
-
- It started out as a nicely-printed, simple message on
a small memo- card, stuck one-corner-down under the top edge of my doorbell-plate.
It disappeared. The wind must have taken it, I thought, though, as the
outside corridor is decked almost completely by a dark, Germanic- style,
overhanging roof, I could not quite believe that ... but then again, I
have no enemies ... so giving Mother Nature the benefit of the doubt, I
made another one. It, too, disappeared. This went on for some months, between
eight and ten little cards simply going away overnight.
-
- Then I ran out of cards. So I used a note-slip, stuck
on, for good measure, with celluloid tape. Even that went the way of the
mysterious wind. Another eight or ten disappeared. Finally reaching the
regretful conclusion that someone was indeed taking them, I allowed my
mind to wander to my mis-spent youth :
-
- At school, I always had to be the best in class, and
it wasn't really that difficult, and my main interest was Science. Why
was I interested in Science? -- I finally found out almost forty years
later whilst speaking to my shrink : the epiphanic realisation that it
was not Science I had been interested in, at all, I did not really want
to be a nuclear physicist, it was that I hated school so much that I needed
science to build bombs and rocket delivery- systems (I am NOT a suicide-bomber)
to make sure school would never come again! -- and, too late, I realised
I should much rather have been an honest photojournalist, instead!
-
- Oh, dear me! But Science, especially Chemistry, had served
me well : I built booby-traps in tin-cans and cardboard boxes, with canny
booby-trapped fuses, especially tremblor-fuses using hypergolic (self-igniting
when mixed) chemical components, that would fire up bundles of fire-crackers
taped together at the slightest touch or attempt to move them ; there would
be a cute little box or can, sitting demurely on the sidewalk, and at the
slightest touch, of, say, a box that appeared to be holding a presentation
quantity of wrapped sweets, flat jets of whitish-grey smoke would shoot
out of all open slits and the box would disappear with a mighty bang into
a cloud of smoke and thousands of fluttering shards ; my successes went
completely to my head, and I fancied myself as Georgie P, D.DT (Doctor
of Dirty Tricks) and was much respected in my time, even at eight years
old, if not directly avoided whenever possible.
-
- So, two weeks ago, I set myself down and built a special
little "Please Knock" sign : I cut out a little frame from a
piece of cardboard, much like a miniature picture-frame, stuck a pre-written
"Please Knock" piece of typing paper on the one side, and a piece
of four-layer paper tissue on the reverse. I then carefully peeled off
three of the four tissue layers, leaving just one breath-thin layer on
the back of the frame. As this might not break cleanly, having yet a very
little flexibility, if not strength, I taped thin strips of one-sided self-adhesive
paper over the thin layer at spaced intervals, so as they were deformed
as the sign was presumably being crumpled up by some guilty hand and quickly
shoved into a deep pocket, the thin backing would definitively rip and
let go the content it was holding in.
-
- The content? : Oh, I forgot! : before adding the paper
tissue and peeling off all but one diaphanous layer, I had filled the little
frame with a full packet of scarlet, Easter-Egg colouring powder. This
is horrible stuff, indeed, even the merest, and, to the naked eye, totally
invisible speck, when slightly moistened, even by sweat, leaves awful streaks
of what appears to be blood all over everything it touches.
-
- And I should know, as before I could marry here in Switzerland
back in 1978, I had to first become Greek Orthodox, else they would not
let me marry. Having tried to study Theology for a few years without success,
I told the Registry Office I was an agnostic, but so much for religious
freedom at the time, here! Thanks to a friendly Greek pastor, I made it
and so much for historical aftermath : I am still friends with my Ex.
-
- But the Greek Orthodox Church, calling itself The Patriarchate,
sends out little packets of scarlet Easter Egg colourant every year with
their traditional Easter message, and as the name "Patriarchate"
disturbed me, one day at my mailbox I made the gross mistake of ripping
such a letter in two and all my clothing turned pink. The powder also settled
quite invisibly into every pore of a rough granite slab beneath the mailboxes,
and on Easter Sunday, under a light drizzle, it came out again as what
appeared to be pools of blood, as though an Easter Lamb or Our Saviour
had just been done in there, and it scared the whatevers out of the lower
floor, all manned by aged pensioners in this Council house, Salvation not
being always that welcome, when it becomes personal, if you see what I
mean?
-
- Anyway, on this Day of Forgiveness, Peace on Earth, Brotherly
Love and whatnot, (plug one in here), someone attested to their good will
by once again doing me the dirty and removing my little sign, a particularly
nicely-made on, if I might add. It had hung there, undisturbed, almost
two weeks now, and the thought that crossed my ever-so-wily mind was that,
as it was so nice in appearance, whoever was doing this strange thing,
might remove it on Christmas Day as a special favour to their own neuro-psychotic
hang-ups -- and they did! -- "Please Knock" --with a Knock-On-Effect!
:
-
- ... RIP! -- sign disappears fast into a pocket as the
doer walks by, perhaps into a particularly expensive pocket in a piece
of festive Sunday clothing on its way, with its inhabitor, to a very nice
Christmas party, all guests in their best and finest, driving to get there,
hands on leather-covered steering-wheel, touching expensive leather upholstery
with its ever so many airy perforations for powder to settle, host and
then guests shaking hands, sitting on some Christmassy-white sofa, brushing
crumbs from white shirt-front onto nice pile-carpet, later, hastily washing
hands before dinner, drying them on finest, special-occasion towelling
in an expensive bathroom, noticing --- WHAT?! -- Oh-oh!! -- red-faced admissions,
guests smearing white tablecloth and serviettes and noticing clothes have
got it, too, scowls, anger, perpetrator reaches into pocket and pulls out
my little sign, "What have you got there ?" "What ?!"
-- "You swiped someone's ... ?!" "YOU ?!" "Please
Knock" -- lady hostess opening mouth for first scream of the season
-- husband advancing, rolling-up sleeves -- see what I mean by a Knock-On-Effect?
-
- The moral of this story is : Never Take, Without First
Giving, Lest you Get More Than You Took!
-
- And a Merry Christmas to You All! Georgie P, D.DT
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