Sandscript Under Seige

Leaving home is never easy, even if you’re just popping round to the greengrocers; you never know what may happen while you’re away. Don’t forget to make the beds and leave the kitchen tidy; after all, if you have the misfortune to be murdered while you are out, the forensics team will be round scrutinising every dusty corner of your home. If it is somebody else’s unlucky day you may return to find your road under siege, the whole area in lock down because a neighbour is being held hostage or that quiet house across the road is a bomb factory. At such times you will be glad you have your purse, credit cards and smart phone with you so you can shelter in a local hostelry, and most importantly, tell everyone on Facebook about your plight.
An Englishwoman’s home is her castle and preparing for the worst has the upside of the great joy and relief when you turn the key in the door and enter your own private sanctuary. Most of us have been lodgers, enjoyed institutional living, house shares etc, but most of us have not been refugees; fire, floods and gas explosions leading to a few nights in the local sports centre would give us only a small taste of what it is like to be a refugee.
But apart from life’s real dramas many of us do find our homes under siege; a first world problem, but stressful. If you read Sandscript on the Scaffold back in June you will know we have been surrounded by scaffold and building projects in our little road. Our own contribution to dust and noise started straight after Easter and is finally finished, the man den complete and brickwork re-pointed after years of being blasted by salty south westerly winds. Our local builders were polite and hard working, the finished product just as we imagined, the boss came frequently to check on the slow progress; we had happily agreed to them getting started rather than booking a block of exclusive time in the distant future. Ninety days of remembering to get dressed, not opening the bedroom curtains in case a builder is up on the scaffold, making sure you have enough milk for the endless teas and coffees.
In our various homes we have had windows ripped out in the middle of winter, houses rewired and repiped, new bathrooms, internal flood damage repaired. However polite and considerate the workmen, you still feel under siege, your home is no longer your own. You find yourself whispering, you can’t yell at the family or listen to the radio in case you miss them calling out with a query. The power gets turned off when you are in the middle of doing the ironing or writing your blog. You can’t get out to the shops or your zumba class because you are waiting in for the carpenter or painter.
Now all is quiet in our road; for the first time in ages no one is having any work done and there haven’t been any house fires recently. I miss the clink of scaffold and the procession of lorries swinging dangerous loads onto driveways. Never mind, perhaps next week our street will be involved in a real life crime drama and I will be able to write a blog about it.
In my latest collection of stories Someone Somewhere, Selina Harris finds herself under siege with a strange visitor in the novella ‘Someone For The Weekend’ and in the short story 'Recycling', the residents of a quiet cul-de-sac are shocked to find themselves being evacuated by the police.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Someone-Some...