From Tiny Acorns

I've been blogging for 8 days. Embarrassingly, I am slightly excited that tomorrow is a new month, so I'll have a teeny archive comprising February's posts. I really need to get out more.

However, going out is really rather traumatic at the moment because I seem to be the target of an (amusingly small and pathetic) hate campaign lately. I think a red-haired teenager who frequently hangs about the children's play area (and I mean 'hangs' literally, upside down, from the equipment) is out to get me. Someone has been throwing mud at my front door and windows, and then cackling madly from a distance, possibly in a slightly manic upside-down kind of way.

It might not be him. I'm not completely sure. The road I live in forms a square with a village green in the centre, and after dark the 'kids' loitering around the play area that forms part of that green are largely hidden in shadows as the street lighting is only dotted around the perimeter. For this reason, I can't see who the perpetrator of this heinous crime is. In addition, I feel that opening the front door and standing there in full view while people throw mud at the house would probably not be the most brilliant of my ideas.

So why do I think the surly redhead might be my mud-slinging tormentor?

Well firstly, a few months ago I waded in and broke up a fight in which he was involved. The manner in which he was involved was that of someone who was repeatedly kicking and thumping another boy who was lying on the floor groaning "Stop" in a plaintive voice, and crying pitifully. The boy on the floor was smaller than the red-haired teenager by about a foot in height and three stones in weight. I was on my way back from the Rosie and Jim shop, and as it was the return leg I was of course carrying all the bags and my toddler, and thought my arms may actually drop off at any moment. So when I spied this disturbance of village serenity, I'm afraid my first thought was not for the welfare of any of the parties involved, but for my own poor arms which would now have to bear the weight of all the bags and children for even longer while I went over to tell the red-haired boy to bugger off, and which I feared may actually resemble those of Mr Tickle by the time I eventually got home.

So, arms protesting and toddler making growling noises (he was being a lion; he wasn't trying to join in with the action by pretending to be a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal or anything), I walked over, eyes rolling in annoyance and told the red-haired boy to bugger off. As I approached, he loosened his grip and the smaller boy scrambled to his feet, still crying. I asked him if he was OK, he said he was, and he hobbled off. Red-haired boy then tried to explain how it wasn't actually his fault that small boy had been on the ground receiving numerous blows to the head, because small boy had started it, by throwing...wait for it... a mighty acorn at red-haired boy. Harsh, you may think, but my arms and I did not consider this to be mitigating circumstances, and we told him so. There was no further conversation, as my arms could bear the small talk no longer, and we wended our way home with "I'LL SHOW YOU THE SCRATCH THAT ACORN MADE IF YOU LIKE" ringing in our ears.

Since then, red-haired boy has developed a Look. He uses his Look on me every time he sees me, to show me that he is not scared of me. I Look back at him to show him that I am not intimidated by his Look - did I mention that I am also about a foot shorter and 3 stones lighter than he is as well? Sometimes red-haired boy likes to be tough, and get in my way. He only does this when I am in the car; he'll take a couple of extra seconds getting himself and his football out of the road when I pass by, confident that I can't get out of the car or drive over the grass verge to get him.

If I am on foot, he just gets the hell out of my way.

Aside from these Western style 'this village ain't big enough for the both of us' run-ins with red-haired boy, my reasoning that he is the likely culprit of my muddied front elevation is that it's almost certainly not the small boy I stuck up for in that fight, or the middle-aged couple next door, or the pensioner at the end of the row, or Crazy Teaspoon Lady.

Actually, it might be Crazy Teaspoon Lady. After all, I never did marry her son, even though out star signs matched.