Disturbing the neighbours

How do you react when someone knocks on your door in the early evening? You got in about forty five minutes ago and the door bell rings. You look through the eye hole and see some girl in tee-shirt and jeans holding a bit of paper. She's not smart enough for Jehova's Witness but on the other hand the local paper just gets posted through the letter box. Do you answer or do hope she'll stop leaning on the door bell and go away?

Normally, I'm expecting the person who happens to knock on my door so when its unexpected I'm already suspicious. Its hard to get into this building and with layers of doors to get through to even get to my front door I know that this door knocker is on the hard sell. Or its the postman.

My neighbours are not too different from me. So when I went knocking on doors to talk about my community gardening idea they were suspicious. They opened their doors after undoing five dead locks and regarded me from behind the door. It was clear I'd interrutped important chores and as my spiel about gardening went on this vibe became louder.  After a while I started to hope that the doors wouldn't be opened. I started to feel that this was a silly frivolous idea; who would want to leave their cosy flat to follow me to the mud and the rain? 

Suddenly a door opened and the listener's face went from closed frown to beaming smile. She had been living here ten years and no one had ever done anything like this she said. She had been trying to grow things on her balcony but really missed her garden in South Norwood. She would love to be part of this crazy scheme (my words not hers, by the way). 

With that injection of enthusiasm i continued to disturb my neighbours with renewed vigour. Only two futher people answered their doors in response - one had English as a second language and had trouble understanding why we would want to did up a church yard. I got all flustered and ended up shoving my leaflet at him and pointing to the email address. At one door the response came from the dog. The bark was so loud I prayed the door wasn't going to be opened by the owner. It stayed closed thankfully. As i carefully posted my leaflet through the letter box it ripped through as the dog defended its terretory from papyral attack.

I returned to the sanctuary of my flat and opened a bottle of beer. All i had to do was hope that three or four people would see my leaflets and posters and get in touch...