2003-08-09 1:32 pm

Dead Old Guy

Two weeks ago at number 20 a sort of voodoo shrine appeared in an old woman's front garden, composed of kitchen utensils.

She had hung a tea towel from the lower branches of the shrub, and in front of it she had thrust a wooden spoon into the ground. Attached to the wooden spoon was a single plastic clothes peg.

I went past this shrine several times as I delivered the post, wondering what it stood for, and what on earth had prompted the old woman to construct it.

Then one day the shrine was gone. The whole garden was gone, in fact. She had covered it with a kind of dusty shale.

I was fingering a piece of the shale when she appeared from her door.

"Do you like my garden?" she asked, beaming at me happily.

"What is it?" I asked, holding out the flat, wafery stone.

"I don't know. But it turns purple when it rains!"

The stones were covered in a white chalky dust that came off on my fingers.

"Can I see?" she asked, as if she hadn't yet touched the new stones.

Then the man with one leg who lives below her started shouting, and I made off hastily.

His voice followed me up the road.

DEAD! DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

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