Tiny twig almost leads to a punch-up for Bob the Builder | Steve Canavan

Let me set the scene.

I had, as has happened every single day during lockdown, been to the local park with my three-year-old, Mary.

We go about 10.30am and have the same daily ritual.

First we feed the ducks with two rounds of bread. This may sound like a simple procedure but takes the best part of an hour because Mary is very particular about each duck getting its own piece of bread and so refuses to throw any if a duck who has previously had his mouthful of bread is in the vicinity.

Next we head to the statues where we play the statue game.

This involves us, in front of two real statues, pretending to be – you’ve guessed it, unless you’re really, really thick – statues.

After that we go to an ornamental bench on the far side of the park, on which each arm-rest has the head of a lion carved on it. In a moment of stupidity on a walk long ago, I christened these lions Albert and Eddie, and so now we have to go and say hello to Albert and Eddie every day and check they are okay.

Anyway after we’ve done all these crazy things, it is time to go home.

And this is when the incident referred to at the start of this drivel occurred.

On the way home, you see, I become Bob The Builder and Mary is Wendy.

We each carry a small twig we’ve collected from the road, and then every so often stop at a wall to pretend we are fixing it.

Harmless fun, right?

Well, apparently not, for as we stopped at one wall and touched it with our twigs, I heard a man’s voice shout from above ‘Oi, can you get away from our wall!’.

I looked up to see an incredibly large gentleman with a bulbous nose and hair that looked like it’d been collected from a barber’s floor and stuck on his head in random fashion with Pritt Stick, hanging out of his upstairs window looking incredibly angry. (I wasn’t being unkind there, just giving an accurate description).

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I replied cheerily. ‘I’m just playing a game with my daughter. She’s pretending we’re Bob The Builder.’

I figured the last comment, plus the fact my daughter is aged three, double-plus the fact we were holding a twig and not a bloody pneumatic drill, might appease him but, a little like Chamberlain with Hitler, my faith was misplaced. ‘I don’t care what you’re doing,’ he bellowed. ‘Go and do it somewhere else’.

I was genuinely so taken aback that for a long moment I stood with my mouth hanging open, like a teenage lad at school asked to work out an improper fraction, then, slightly stung, replied: ‘Are you serious? We’re doing absolutely no harm at all.

‘I can assure you your brickwork is not being damaged by this small twig.’

At this point I held up my tiny 10cm-long twig, as if proving a point. He wasn’t for backing down though.

‘Listen, I don’t care about your twig or your game,’ he yelled.

‘If you don’t go and do it somewhere else I’ll come down there and move you my bloody self’.

If this man has a wife – which I doubt very much – what a lucky woman she is.

I was so annoyed I wanted to stand my ground and discuss it further, but decided it probably wasn’t best for Mary to hear her father embroiled in a heated row over a twig.

Instead, shaking my head and tutting audibly, I scooped my daughter up and moved farther down the street, where we continued to play.

My only hope is that there’s a bad storm this week, which blows over not only his front wall but his garage and most of his house too. Fingers crossed.