by Darren Horton

Created on: November 20, 2010   Last Updated: March 26, 2011

The Dud Samaritan

A few months before Christmas, I caught an old man eating potato-peelings from my dustbin.  I watched him through a gap in the curtains.  The following night he was there again, rummaging around in my dustbin for scraps.

As I’d only had a pot noodle and a bag of crisps for my tea that night, the pickings were scant and I felt a bit mean.  So the next evening I cooked myself a full roast lamb dinner with all the trimmings, purposefully preparing too much.  The effort was well worth it. 

That night, my nocturnal visitor spent nearly an hour outside my window; nestling over my dustbin; looking around guiltily as he gorged himself on bits of gravy-soaked onion and mashed potato.

I felt great.  But my legs were aching and I had to fetch a stool to sit on.

When he’d had his fill, he took a pair of my socks from the washing line and began filling them up with leftovers from the bin.  I had this ridiculous thought – that it might be possible for verrucas to spread from foot to mouth, and I worried about it, wondering whether I should go out and warn him against eating the sock-wrapped take-away.  But I didn’t want to scare him away.  He might never visit again. 

That night I threw away a half-empty bottle of mouthwash and my old toothbrush, just in case.

He didn’t visit for a couple of nights and I got to wondering where he was, or if he knew I watched him through the curtains, or if he’d contracted oral verrucae and found it difficult to eat.  Perhaps one of my neighbours had lured him away with better treats, the same way that lonely old people steal other people’s cats, tempting them with salmon and steak.

My worries were unfounded however, when to my absolute delight, there he was again, ferreting around in my dustbin for his supper.  But when he pulled a yoghurt out from the bin, a week past its sell-by date, I whispered “no, no, no.  Don’t eat that…the Big Mac…under the carrier-bag”. 

I liked to hide his food.  Make him hunt for it like he would in the wild. 

Unfortunately he didn’t locate the Big Mac that night.  He did eat the yoghurt though, and to my horror, most of the contents of the Tesco carrier bag.  I’d used the bag to empty the rubbish from my car – half a sandwich; a broken lighter that wouldn’t go out unless you blew it out; half-eaten chocolate

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