Stripper In The House

What do you do when you want to get rid of something?

Well, I had a wallpaper stripper and a heat gun using up space, but I don't own any wallpaper any more and I hate to throw good things away.

So on it went to freecycle.org late last night.

By morning I had 19 replies and had to choose on which of them to bestow my favours.

A dizzying position of power that I am simply not used to.

This being a three-pipe problem I sunk into my easiest chair while the concubine dropped peeled grapes into my barely cooperating gob. Periodically, I made noises of apparent musing, as I agreed and disagreed with my current view on which individual to make my inhumanly generous gift.

In reality, I zipped through the "applications"and wanted to choose one who seemed relatively available to get the business completed quickly.

But what I finding myself wanting to know was to do with identity, a name of somebody you was probably about to come to my house, but the name frequently did not appear to be part of people's e-mail address. (Which is fair enough it isn't part of my shopping e-mail address either).

And it really helped to see a picture. This gave me the opportunity to exclude anybody who couldn't be bothered to smile on their chosen picture. It's nice to know in advance there are keen to advertise themselves as miserable so-and-sos but it's a wet Thursday morning I don't want to do therapy on anybody just yet .

It's not that I think you meet many maniacs on freecycle. In fact I strongly suspect we are the very pinnacle of humanity in thought, word and deed.

But my humanity drew me (as the selection process had been forced upon me) to somebody who wrote a short e-mail implying the items would be useful. I think I smelt a rat on some of them but that's part of the game, I think. Not everybody can be redecorating grandma's house this weekend!

So I went for someone who could be bothered to write a sentence, someone who would allow their name to appear somewhere in their application, and, courtesy of Google Plus, someone who's picture I could see who was smiling. And this is who I went for.

It's simple things isn't it.

Simple things give people confidence.

A word. A smile. A politeness.

Not. Rocket. Surgery.