Angel or crook?

Dear Editor, It was quarter to eight in the evening and dark when the doorbell rang. I suppose we?re all on our guard these days when there is an unexpected caller at the door. I rushed from the phone where I had just finished dialling a number and opened the front door. A burly and rather sad young man in jerkin and jeans and with a large bag on his shoulders stood there.

“Thank you for smiling,” he began. There was an implication in that comment that he had faced enough rejection for one day. I sympathised privately but in a way, I fear, his comment was counterproductive. There, in my warm house and in my comfortable slippers I wondered, heaven help me, whether this was a clever bid for sympathy.

Anyway I had several things going on in my head at the same time and then the phone rang again ? presumably the puzzled recipient of the call I dropped when the doorbell rang.

The young man had an identity card on a tape around his neck. He clearly wanted to sell me something from his bag. This was just not the moment when I wanted to give him time. He offered to come back and I declined.

He might well have been genuine. He might, given the reports which occur on your site from time to time, have been some type of crook. He was also, as we all are, someone?s child and I have children. I sent him away. Rejection is a horrible thing to deal with. But even had it been the right moment, this time of evening would not have been a wise one for anyone to entertain a strange caller.

” . . .Be not forgetful of strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels

unawares.” (St Paul)

Oh dear.
Norman Brand
Thame 05/11/09