Least Said by A.J. O’Toole
“I’ve noticed you’re a noticer,” my colleague said.
That’s how it started. I’d complained to him about a house on a nearby street that I passed on my walk into work, where a car was slowly dissolving on the drive. All tyres flat, the chassis – once blue, now green with mould – sunk down on dead shock absorbers, the wings pockmarked and cobwebbed with rust. A faded yellow sticker in the rear windscreen read: A Dog is For Life, Not Just for Christmas
I travelled a lot for work, random places, domestic and across Europe, always on my own. All that travel gave me time to think, time to convince myself the idea was a good one. And it gave me cover for my new scheme. I was in Prague when I sent the first postcard – a view of the Charles bridge, black statues in the mist – with a printed sticker for the address, and another sticker in bold caps:
YOU’LL NEVER DRIVE THAT CAR AGAIN. GET IT TOWED AWAY, RECLAIM YOUR DRIVE AND LIVE YOUR LIFE
Two weeks later the decaying car had gone, and as I walked by the next morning, a man was whistling cheerfully as he power washed the drive to remove any sign it had ever been there. I’d made a difference. From then I didn’t only notice, I served notice. On every trip away I took my preprinted blunt advice.
CLEAN YOUR WINDOWS AND TEAR DOWN YOUR NICOTINED NET CURTAINS
TAKE CARE OF YOUR DOG SO IT DOESN’T BARK ALL DAY
On a trip to the south coast I dropped my latest into the postbox. Seeing my train was cancelled and I would need to wait two hours, I went for a pint next to the railway station. Always the worst pub, wherever you go – unique but predictably awful, a franchise from hell, fruit machines, sticky carpets, bored bar staff who look ready to fight you. Must be a slow sports day, I thought, as the silent screens were set to the rolling news channel. I settled in and was surprised to see my hometown flash up on one of the TVs, a ticker running block capitals beneath a familiar looking street. A tale of a long simmering neighbourly feud that boiled over into cartoonish stupid sudden violence – with one of them dead, and the other now in police custody. They cut to a reporter, on location, live, mouthing their piece to camera, a wildly overgrown hedge towering behind them.
After two decades working in TV in London and elsewhere, A.J. O’Toole has moved to a small village in the northwest of England to write his stories down while he can still remember them. He has recently had stories published on Literary Garage and Trash Cat Lit.
