THE OBSTRUCTION

The unassuming morning light sauntered through the bedroom window, unchallenged by the permanently closed and disintegrating, sun‑bleached curtains. It waved a playful semaphore reveille on Andrew’s wrinkled, sleeping eyes. So summonsed, Andrew made his reluctant, groaning stretches, raised his weary, aching bones, and eased on the remnants of his slippers: a couple of rubber soles and clinging uppers, soles with more holes than the remaining threadbare, frayed fabric that once boasted a vague approximation to a true tartan. He shuffled from his doorless attic bedroom, down the eleven irregular treads to the bottom of the dark, narrow, enclosed staircase. That achieved, he trauchled across the brittle and crumbling, post‑war linoleum of the corridor hall into the musty living room. Andrew knuckle‑rubbed his eyes to dislodge the bleary remnants of sleep, blinked rapidly, and rubbed again: this time more vigorously to disperse the obstinate opacity. There was no discernible improvement.

“Ah’m no blin’ yet,” he assured as much to himself as to the empty.

His brain began to join him as he looked again towards his small window. It was definitely darker in here than upstairs, and the scant light carried a peculiar reddish‑brown hue. Andrew peered curiously, pushing his nose against the streaky windowpane. Suddenly, he recoiled in shock, gangling backwards onto his stoury settee then immediately springing up and dashing off to the smallest room. It was the fastest he had moved in decades.

After ten full minutes Andrew emerged and once again hobbled along his hallway, this time purposefully, making directly for the front door while hitching up his pyjama trousers, fumbling with the garden raffia twine that had long ago replaced the woven cord. As quickly as he was able, he wiggled loose four squealing bolts and turned the buckled key in the new rim lock he’d installed fifty years previously. He jerked the door open as if trying to startle a keyhole peeper or a stray dog considering a doorstep deposit. Andrew’s jaw nearly hit the threshold, his hands automatically grasping to catch his dislodged wallies.

There was a skip outside the building.

“Wha-de ....!! Wha’s a muckle skip doing jamm’p agin ma hoose? How‑de..did tha’ gang there?”, he spluttered, saliva drooling from his stubbled chin.

It was a big one, way more than muckle. Mammoth. More rusted than red, with patchy painted letters daubed freehand on the buckled sides. A forty cubic yard behemoth, encumbered with eight tons of broken bricks, chunks of crumbling concrete and muddy gravel. It dwarfed Andrew’s kerbside cottage, the undemolished central section of a terraced row. The skip’s sides reached above the old house’s gutters and it comfortably stretched to block the living room window, the front door and both windows of the seldom used good room.

Andrew pushed his teeth back in place. Feeling the draught, re‑hoisted his trousers and retied the raffia: properly this time. At eighty‑nine, matters of modesty had ceased to hold relevance for Andrew, but despite the early Spring sun, there was a chilly wind accelerating through the shadowy tight passage between the cottage and the dominating steel structure.

Sometime in the wee small hours a twenty‑tonner had rumbled and groaned and hissed as it drew up on the narrow road outside Andrew’s cottage. The driver repeatedly hammered hard on Andrew’s front door, cursed angrily and spat in the sheugh, then climbed back into the cab. The engine revved, hydraulics moaned, and support legs whacked onto the tarmac. Then the tipper raised, the mechanical arms heaved and dumped the rear end of the skip heavily onto the road. Next came the excruciating screams from the front lifting mechanism. Chains rattled and clattered as if Ygor was striving for freedom from his torturing captors. The cantilevers strained, the lorry tilted nose up and then escaped, louping forward to freedom. The ground shook with a final thump worthy of special registration on the Richter scale as the laden skip finally dropped. The driver quickly detached the chains from the skip. The struts were barely clear of the road as the truck surged into the night while, with chains swinging, the boom arms and cantilevers automatically reset. This was contrary to any written procedure, but the driver was done for the night, done with skips, done with this employment, and done caring about anything except getting home.

The cacophony would have awakened the dead. But Andrew was yet among the living and so had slept through the turmoil. Andrew wasn’t totally deaf. He was only two hearing aids deaf, not that they made any difference resting in their accustomed place, a cracked and stained mug on the kitchen shelf.

“Ah’m no deef. It’s people that mumble. Wha’ do Ah need them fur. There’s naeb’dy here tae talk to. Thank Goad!” he would justify to himself or anyone brave enough to enquire.

And that is why he was unaware that he was now being arraigned by Irené, the self‑appointed neighbourhood civil law enforcement officer. The Head of Neighbourhood Watch. Each AGM, Irené was unanimously voted‑in by both attending electors, the sole candidate for the pointless job that nobody, except the compilers of the Affiliate Constitution, thought was necessary, wanted, or cared about.

“What’s this for?! You can’t have it here. It’s blocking the road and the City Express is coming through any minute now. You have to move it. Immediately!”

The practicalities of this command concerned Irené no more than do their edicts impinge on any dictator’s convenience.

It was her gesticulating shadow that drew Andrew from his induced immersion in curious disbelief. He turned and, hard as it seemed under the prevailing circumstances, realised that his day had taken another turn for the worse. Uncowed by the ‘meddlin wummin’ and her belligerent body language, he flashed his repositioned falsers in mock friendship, and, speaking in his best Sunday voice, charmed: “Isn’t it a lovely day, Irene.”

He always called her Irene, not Irené, that ‘stupid affectation of a name’. Although not of her creation, to Andrew it revealed the type of pretentious family she had sprung from but thankfully had not continued. Yet she, by using it, was culpable, insisting on it and parading it like a royal title. But his reasoning was more straightforward, he chose to call her Irene simply because he knew it caused her the most immense irritation.

“I can’t hear you”, he professed unapologetically. This time his smile was a genuine reflection of deep inner joy.

“Go ‑ and ‑ get ‑ your ‑ hearing ‑ aids” she mouthed, strategically saving her vocal cords, to the accompaniment of her fingers tapping at her ears.

Andrew knew full well what she was saying, but he played dumb and augmented his refreshed ingratiating smile with a tilted, intrigued head. With affected ham‑acting attention, he nodded and watched as Irené repeated her mime. Then he paused, adjusted to a sincere face and replied with an affirming nod, “Yes it is.”

Exasperated, Irené blustered past Andrew and squeezed herself through his doorway. She was not a slight lady and, by the time she returned, the fragmented hallway lino jigsaw puzzle had been upgraded to advanced skill status.

“Here!” she slammed the squealing free‑issue devices into Andrew’s ears.

Andrew winced and took his time defiantly repositioning them and adjusting their settings while doing a lot of exaggerated despairing head shaking and resigned sighing.

“Thank you Irene. I haven’t been able to find these in a while.” Andrew oozed mock gratitudinous contentment.

“Nonsense! They were in that disgusting mug where you always keep them.”

“Oh, I do forget so.....” Andrew feigned pitiful distress with a shaking of his head and wringing of hands.

“Right. What’s this for? It’s got to go. Quickly!”

Andrew shrugged and presented his best pathetic servile open‑handed gesture. “It’s not mine, m’lady”, he curtsied.

Irené knew there was no point debating further with he whom she considered to be the biggest of the village idiots. By her assessment she had a wide field of choice, but Andrew came top of the empty skullers. The pressure of the impending city express left her no time to execute her customary sequence of correctional instructions.

She pulled out her mobile phone and speed‑dialled the bus HQ. There was nothing they could do there to avert disaster. She hung up. Urgent local action was needed if the stage was to get through. Irené swelled even larger in body and mind knowing she was the only hope they had. Once again, she hit the speed dial, this time raising her co‑partner in the next village.

“Jessie, you’ve got to stop the express. We have a crisis here. The route is blocked. Send it by the low road. And tell the driver to double back up the brae for Bobby or he’ll miss the dentist. No time for details. We need action!” Irené breathed a sigh of relief and mentally pinned another medal on her chest, ‘For services to the community in the face of impending danger’.

“Now for this monstrosity.”

Irené advanced swinging an outstretched arm, side‑sweeping Andrew into the meagre shelter of his doorway. It was not intended for his good. Any benefit to Andrew was incidental. He was just getting in the way of a public servant acting in the line of duty. Notebook in hand she made a reconnaissance patrol around the skip, scrutinising, deciphering and diligently recording the remnants of the painted characters on each side. After her third circuit Irené felt confident she had pieced together enough of the coded hieroglyphics to launch her attack. With no speed dial available it was ‘back to the tools’. She’d have to do it the old way, by steam. Her fingers pounced on the phone buttons sequencing her best‑fit derived number combination. The unobtainable signal rang out. Next attempt brought ‘Cats in Crisis’ assuring her that her call was important to them. Undeterred, Irené worked her way through the permutations reaching ‘Flippertyjibbets for all your party fun stuffs’, ‘The Captain’s Cabin meeting the needs of real men’, and finally ‘The Church of the Hallowed Saint Juniper the Divine’ who suggested that she take time to reflect on the real reason she had reached out: her unresolved distress, and to listen to her true calling and mission, with meetings for enquirers every Wednesday evening.

“I am not distressed, thank you, and my mission is clear. Goodbye.” Irené squeezed down hard on the red, end call button with the finality of launching a nuclear strike. She straightened her back, closed her eyes and focussed on her breathing. During this she caught a whiff of a familiar odour. Her next sensation was tactile but not tactful as she was prodded uncomfortably in the back.

“Here,” said Andrew, making a firm but belatedly announced delivery of Yellow Pages, “There’s skips in there.”

“How rude!” denounced Irené, but she accepted the directory.

“It takes one.....” said Andrew, “Look under N. There’s a big one you can make out on the far side.”

And sure enough, by standing back and ignoring the irregular lines of numbers the chipped and scraped components of what had been an N materialised for Irené, as did what looked like a W, and possibly, yes, an S. It didn’t take long for the sleuth to locate the correct number, which bore no resemblance to the skip’s graffitied enigma code. After about twenty rings came a trained sincerity voice “N.W.S. 24/7 Rapid Response Skips.”

“Well would you please rapidly respond and remove the obstruction you have abandoned outside Mr Andrew McMaster’s house in Libohead. You’ve dumped a loaded skip in the main road, the city express is due and it’s got to go. Now!” Irené was in high dudgeon, total command and control mode. Fellow despots would applaud.

“Did you say McMaster? He ordered it last night along with eight tons of rubble for immediate delivery. It was most, well, odd. We usually deliver empty but managed to divert a loaded return unit his way. He sounded desperate.”

“He did?!” Irené glared at Andrew.

It didn’t take long for Andrew’s denial to be relayed, nor for NWS 24/7 to contest his claim courtesy of their call recording made ‘for quality, training and service improvement purposes’.

The playback was damning as Andrew’s voice had been clearly captured, along with his credit card details.

The record stood before the court, thus:

“N.W.S 24/7 Rapid Response”

“Ah need somethin’ fur it quickly”

“How can I help, sir?”

“Oh, the usual stuff. Ah skipped it and ate tons of crumble. Nae luck. Can ye send it to me.”

“A skip with eight tons of rubble, you say?”

“That’s what Ah’m sayin’. How quick can you get it to me? Ah’m really stuck”.

“It’s a bit unusual, sir”.

“Ah can pay for the delivery. Ah don’t need haunoots.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but no promises. I’ll take your address and card details. We can sort out the price once we’re sure it can be done.”

“It worked before alright. Ah can tell ye. Oh yes! Here’s ma card........”

Irené could only agree that it sounded like Andrew had placed the unusual order. Although the playback was poor there were sufficient confirmatory details to place it beyond reasonable doubt in the mind of the one woman judge and jury. Why he wanted the loaded skip was as mysterious as his forgetting about it.

Irené stuck to her guns.

“However it got here is mainly irrelevant. It’s got to go. And fast.”

“If Mr McMaster gives the instruction I’ll get it collected before the end of the week. There’ll be an extra charge for early uplift.”

“Now you listen to me young man. This has nothing to do with Mr McMaster. You are breaking the law by obstructing the King’s highway and that carries a hefty fine and imprisonment, I can assure you! Further, there will be no charge for anything. You have been irresponsible in the discharge of your regulated duties and you have illegally recorded and retained my client’s financial details.” Having now appointed herself for the defence, Irené demanded: “Move it immediately or I will contact Superintendent Lockhart. He’s on my speed‑dial.”

The respondent knew there was no point debating with she whom he considered the greatest bossy pest yet encountered. It galled him to take orders and threats from such an aggressive battle‑axe, no matter how right she may be. But, she had won him over with her ‘young man’ attribution. When you are pushing fifty‑eight you take it where you find it.

Irené mentally drafted her commendation from Neighbourhood Watch for ‘Upholding the amenity of community environs and care of the elderly’.

She glared at Andrew through an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. He had clearly lost it and had caused her immense inconvenience. For that, she would gladly commit him to a life sentence without parole at Happy Last Days eventide home where she knew the soup sucked and the disinfectant would obscure Andrew’s odours. Yet, at the self‑denying, subconscious level, Irené knew she needed to keep hold of Andrew to supply her with a continuous flow of ‘raisons d’etre’. Nobody did it better.

Andrew was righteously indignant protesting his innocence.

“It’s identification theft. Ah’ve been hacket! The Ruskies or the Chinas. Or maybe CIA.”

“Yes Andrew, your international importance has finally been acknowledged. You don’t have a computer, you numbskull, so stop talking nonsense.”

“They dinnae need your computer. They have microwaves and spy satellites. Naeb’dy has impunity”.

Irené was overcome by surprising, unsettling sensations, completely new to her. Was this sympathy, empathy, human kindness or, surely not, maternal instinct!

“Come inside and have a seat till we get to the bottom of this.”

It was the first time Andrew had been invited into his own house although his father had thrown him out often enough. Now ‘Mi‑fhìn’, the ancestral home of the Libohead McMasters since banishment from the Clan for insubordination, was his. But dutifully he sheepishly followed Irené in and obeyed when told to sit on his own sofa. The first thing she did was look for the redial button on Andrew’s landline handset, but the sticky black bakelite implement hailed from the era before STD had been introduced. A time when the abbreviation did not mean a communicable disease but Subscriber Trunk Dialling. All it had to offer was a silvered rotary dial with ten holes that revealed finger‑greased, faded letters and numbers on yellowed card.

“You must have called them, Andrew, but with this museum piece I can’t check the last number you used”.

“Ah’m tellin’ ye Ah didnae ca’ them. Ah ca’ed fur ma perscript’n, wummin. The chemist was shut so Ah looked up the Aw Day Doctors. That’s who it wis. Ma perscript’n”.

“Where did you look it up? Show me”.

Andrew slouched forward, stretched and lifted the local services telephone directory. He sclaffed his hand several times on the floppy book, randomly turning over multiple pages with each stroke, then jabbed his finger decisively. He bent the pages back and thrust the documentary evidence at his accuser.

“There! The NHS24. Telt ye”. He thudded back, triumphantly erect amid the exploding dust cloud, awaiting an apology.

Irené ran a finger down the page. She exhaled a deep sigh located somewhere in the mid‑ground between exasperation and consolation.

“Andrew, you are not only deaf, you are blind. That isn’t NHS24 it is NWS24/7, the skip people! It’s a wonder they understood you at all. What prescription? And what on earth was eating tons of crumble about?”

“It’s ma laxative. Ah’d run oot. Ah’m bunged up so I took lots of rhuburd crumble to get me goin’, but nae luck.”

“I’ve never heard anything as stupid in my life! Ordering a skip to cure constipation.”

“Aye, for once ye’r right, Irene,” Andrew conceded, “But it worked. Aye, it worked alright!” He flashed his falsies at the pleasing memory.

Footnote:† Mi-fhìn is Scots Gaelic meaning My Own