Garage

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Two months later my leg was nearly back to normal. For making love to Angela. iI was. I knew I had been injured when I used the clutch on my wrecker. That needed a heavy push and after an hour or so's driving I knew I had a healing leg. But for everything else, I was fit again.

One Sunday afternoon, Angela and I were in the garage sorting out the tools my grandfather had left, cleaning, oiling and sharpening as required when an alarm buzzer sounded. That was a recent enhancement to the street's Neighbourhood Watch scheme. If anything unusual was detected by anyone, that buzzer could be activated and the whole street would be on alert.

I looked at the CCTV monitor. It showed people, armed with various weapons, approaching from both ends of the back lane. I told Angela to get into the toilet and bolt the door. I picked up the bill hook I had just been sharpening and stood in the garage doorway. The Reeds/Reynolds men were coming towards me, but behind them elderly men clutching assorted garden tools were appearing in numbers.

"Well, gentlemen? You have made a mistake. You are outnumbered and the Police are on their way." I said.

"Fuck That!" One man shouted. "We are here to get you."

"And if I don't want to be got?" You are outnumbered, surrounded, and I have a vicious weapon in my hands."

Only then did they realise that there were about twenty garden-tool armed men in the lane. They gave up and were arrested by the local police who arrived following numerous emergency calls.

Eventually the Reynolds/Reed family men came to trial and all were issued with restraining orders excluding them for the whole town. The final straw hd been the theft of a new fruit picker that had been bought for a quarter of a million pounds by three farmers working together.

Angela stood beside me on the court room steps with her arms wrapped round me. We looked and felt as a long married couple whose trials and tribulations were behind us. They were. We were happily settled in a community, owning our own house, protected by neighbourhood Watch even if he members were older. I have decades of expert garneing advice; my tools from my garage are frequently borrowed; and I can help out with heavier tasks.

It's what Jason would have wanted until he met me.

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(Author's Note: I try to avoid typos, but my eyesight is compromised by cancer. I use two spellcheckers and print out in large typeface before submitting but I cannot guarantee that everything is typo-free -- because I can't see them. That is particularly true of the sub-title because I am typing blindly into a box I can't really see because it is so small.)