Get a bucket!

I was just reading a post about intrusions. The jarring mind jolt of a knocking on the door or a phone ringing. Especially if your mind is deeply embedded in something else. Even a sweet hello can be jarring, and cause the moment of thought is to vanish. A balancing act, carefully managed until you look away, then splat. Gone.

So all that is true and it happens to me all the time. Yadda yadda yadda. But what it brought to mind was that we never get a knock on the door and the phone never rings. Which I guess makes it all the more jarring when it happens. The last time there was a knock at our door it was shortly after 8:00 pm sometime in July. (I told you no one knocks) We live way out in the middle of the woods. Pass the big tree and the rocks, then ask the deer which way to go and you'll find us. This jaunt is not appealing to door to door sales people, solicitors or whoever else knocks on your door without notice in those places where people live side by side. Fine by me. When the knock came it startled me so badly that I thought it must be something urgent. Something bad. Why else would someone be here? I immediately knew why dogs bark, because if I was a dog, I would have been barking. I sat at high alert in Owen's room, where I was reading him his bedtime story, listening while Martin answered the door. I never in a million years would have expected what was on the other side.

"Do you like mackerel?" Came the loud voice of our neighbour with all the sweetness of a bear crawling from his den in April.

Stunned Martin replies "Yeah, I love mackerel"

"Then get a bucket"

So Martin does. End of conversation.

A few minutes later Martin comes inside with a bucket of fresh mackerel caught for us by our neighbour, who hates everybody, and everyone who knows him apparently returns the sentiment. For whatever reason he likes us. For whatever reason we like him back. The whole episode was so absurd it still makes me chuckle. With a bucket of mackerel, we'll welcome the knock any day.