Page 11 - Julie Thorley Nine Lives book

1. Antisocial Behaviour
A no-nonsense woman, sixty-ish, is dressed in an orange Community Service jumpsuit and work boots. She has been employed applying wood preservative to a seemingly endless fence and uses her paint brush in amboyant gestures for emphasis.
I know what you’re thinking: that I ought to know better at my age. And generally I do. I mean, I’m not really a criminal, but we all have our breaking point. I’m just a normal woman. I try to do my bit – recycling and all that sort of stuff – and I usually keep myself to myself, but it had just been one of those days.
It’s not like I set out to be antisocial. I mean, when you think about what other folk get up to. See her over there? She got done for, well, I can’t go into details, but let’s just say it involved a bodily function and a ower pot outside Lidl.
So anyway, it all started when the postman tried to deliver something I’d ordered out of my catalogue. I’d just popped down to the shop on the corner for a pint of semi-skimmed and when I got back there was a card on the mat saying I’d missed him. Trouble was, he hadn’t lled in the space telling me how long to wait before I could go down and pick it up.
Well, based on past experience I thought three hours would be plenty long enough. So I got myself a bowl of minestrone and a granary bap for lunch, and then walked into town.
When I got to the sorting of ce, there was a great long queue of folk and the chap behind the screen wasn’t being very helpful. No, let’s get it right: he was being downright obstructive. By the time I nally got to the window I was
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