TWO SINISTER-LOOKING MEN

I don’t know, but as this year has dragged on, things seem to have become increasingly and unremittingly bleak, and the problem is that it shows no sign of ever ending and I seem to have adopted the mind set, as I face each new day, that things are probably going to just keep on getting worse. So much so, in fact, that when we spotted two “dodgy looking” geezers looking at paperwork whilst sitting in the front seats of a huge SUV on the road as we headed out to the railway station on one recent morning, I just assumed that they were obviously villains who had been waiting for us to leave so that they could break in and steal our "precious things", or hit men from some long forgotten mafia-based dodgy loan company that we'd inadvertently signed up for, an effect increased by the fact that, as we climbed into our own car, they got out of theirs and started heading towards us.

Fortunately, they walked past us, but then, as I exchanged a look of utter relief with the beloved, I noticed that they turned and, as we drove away, were heading back up the hill towards where our house nestles snugly amongst all of the others. The fact that there are many of them did not seem to matter all that much to me, however, because in my head they were making a bee-line for our place for reasons unknown, and, by the time I had returned from my brief trip to the station, I had decided that they were probably bailiffs who were going to stand on my doorstep and demand that they take the entire contents of my little home away with them, even though (and this is where my mind can get really strange) there really is no very good reason why such a thing should happen as far as I am aware.

Happily (for me, perhaps less so for someone else) they’d gone by the time I got home, and there were no demanding notices on my doormat or stickers pasted to my door, and so I could happily get on with my day, and all the mental explanations that I’d conjured up about the computers not actually being mine and so forth, were now no longer required.

But they had looked decidedly sinister, and this looked truly alarming, and no doubt it was truly alarming for some poor schmoe. It wasn't just me that they made feel uncomfortable either. I noticed later that the beloved had written down their registration number just in case we heard reports of sinister activities in the neighbourhood later on.

There is, of course, just the possibility that they were just two ordinary blokes arriving at 7.00am for a meeting with someone, or even just arriving to help someone out or give them a lift, because you should, of course, never judge by appearances.

But, naturally, we all do, and, no matter how much we claim that we don't profile people based upon their appearances, or a "feeling" we just get about them, or our own experiences or prejudices, sometimes based upon the flimsiest of pieces of personal history (I once had a manager who rejected all applications from anyone called Theresa simply because they hadn't liked a particular Theresa once...), we all still do it.

It's kind of instinctive, I guess. One of those "fight or flight" responses based upon our own inner fears.

And they didn't half look sinister.