Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Strange incident
At about 9pm this evening, I answered a ring at the door (Raleigh Road) to find a man standing there saying that he had just seen some kids running off after throwing a can of paint at our front door. I looked down, and huge globs of white paint were all over the door, floor, plants, bin and walls! He was very helpful, saying he was a builder, knew it was oil-based paint from the smell and instructed me to get washing up liquid, a bucket of water and use earth to mix together to remove it. He then started to help us, even demonstrating with his bare hands in the paint! We were rushing around trying to clear up and I kept thanking him and telling him he shouldn't get dirty, although he seemed unusually keen to help. He said he had just moved into Wightman Road, was locked-out of his house and had just got a take-away (carrier bag in hand). He mentioned being locked-out three times but we did not encourage him to continue helping, and he eventually left.
We then spent 30 mins or so with hosepipe, scrubbing brushes etc cleaning the paint off. During this time I reflected on the whole situation. I now think it is most suspicious! We were in the front room at the time, so surely we would have heard kids laughing or running away? Perhaps I am wrong and he was just being a fantastic neighbour; but it occurs to me that he also could have engineered a situation where there was a lot of chaos and, had we let him help, it would have meant he had significant access to our house while we were distracted. Or Perhaps I am being completely paranoid?! Who knows, but I wanted to share this situation just in case it was suspicious, so others can be forewarned.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Salsa on
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Hmmm sounds a bit bizarre and I think some similar thoughts would have gone through my mind... like: was he keeping you at the front of the house while someone went round the back? And did he want an invite into your house when he kept saying he had been locked out? Glad it all turned out ok in the end - expcept for the paint you had to clear up!!
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Permalink Reply by David Schmitz on
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I'm really grateful to you for mentioning this. It is highly suspicious, and I've suggested to the police Safer Neighbourhoods Team that they take note of what you've written.
David Schmitz
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Harringay Ward
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Good Samaritan or a clever conman setting up a scam? Reminded me of the (in)famous Barcelona birdshit scams.
On the other hand, there are people who do genuinely offer help to strangers - sometimes at potential risk to themselves. As in Martin Luther King's powerful retelling of the old story.
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Permalink Reply by Protheroe O'Shea on
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Can you describe this chap? It wasn't Dean from number 75 perchance?
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Permalink Reply by abstractjuz on
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Not wanting to hijack this thread but 'Tunbridge Wells' closed the original post regarding 'Dean from #75' so I couldn't reply there. FYI - 'Dean' also knocked at our door on LRS.
The 'soccer aid' charity does exist - but I couldn't find any mention of anything happening in Hyde Park on the day he mentioned.
That doesn't prove anything either way but I thought I'd mention it in case someone else has some insight.
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Some more echoes and a few parallels with people on the fringes of Shakespeare's England as described by Neil MacGregor and Margaret Spufford in the BBC Radio 4 series:
"The pedlar is a very elusive figure indeed, not only because he is peripatetic, but he is literally, or she, because there were women pedlars too, lived near the edge of society, the vagrant fringe. They were essentially salesmen, they were the travelling legs of the markets. They circulated very widely and they also circulated their goods very widely. They were travellers on foot, travellers on horseback. So before the village shop is very common, you find these people filling in the gaps."
"But pedlars were figures of suspicion.There were all sorts of people travelling the roads, many just tramps or petty thieves. Shakespeare's Autolycus […] is a typically tricky character from this netherworld of travellers and 'rag and bone' men. When he boasts that he is a 'snapper-up of unconsider'd trifles', what he really means is that he steals sheets from the washing line in one town, to sell them on at the next."
"I suppose you could say that pedlars were a kind of Elizabethan twitterfeed, and their relationship to the truth was just as uncertain."
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