Lockley: Curse the salesman

Sep 29 2008

WHEN I was a child the only people who flogged things on your doorstep were gypsies with bunches of lucky heather.

One, angry at my refusal to hand over cash for a sprig, issued a Romany curse that would see me endure 20 financially barren years.

That was 35 years ago. She’s forgotten to lift it.

Now, however, the world and his wife phones or knocks on the door offering water, energy, mobiles, mortgages, holidays, greenhouses, conservatories, cavity wall insulation, double glazing...

Even my bank manager tried to flog me something – a cyanide tablet.

I’ve been off work for three days and the break has, frankly, been marred by a myriad of cold-callers. I have, they inform me, won two mobile phones, unlimited internet access, a pair of shoes with a compass in the heel and a dream holiday in the resort of my choice, as long as that resort is Torbay and I sign a legally-binding document, during a five hour Carlisle seminar, in my own blood pledging to visit the seaside town every year until 2030.

I’m thinking about it.

This morning a moon-faced individual knocked purposefully on my door and declared he could halve my electricity bill. So could I – by getting my delinquent son to switch the light off after leaving a room.

“What would you say to that?” asked the beaming gent.

I stared blankly before muttering: “I am hyperventilating with joy.”

“So am I,” he babbled, intoxicated by the whiff of an easy buck. “Where do you get your electricity from at the moment?”

“From the plug sockets, mostly,” I told him.

He faltered for a second, before plunging into a spiel about greenhouse gases – from rotting tomatoes, presumably – carbon footprints and the ozone.

I endured it for a few seconds, before uttering my stock rebuttle to salespeople: “I’m sorry, my wife deals with that.”