Unexpected finds in the garden

I got home from work this evening to find a chap sitting on my front doorstep, eating a sandwich. He's got a personal stereo on, and doesn't look up when I approach him.

"Hi?"

He looks up.

"Could I get into my house please?"

He shifts to the side a bit.

I had to go to the bank, so grabbed my things, sidestepped the man, and walked down the street. I came back home via the supermarket, so it was 20 or so minutes later by the time I got home, and he appeared to be gone, other than the detritus of his sandwiches.

So I go and have dinner and stuff, and afterwards decide to go and clean up the sandwich mess from the front steps. There's usually a dustpan and brush next to the bin store, so I go down to get it, and discover the same gentleman enjoying a snooze on the patch of concrete between my front wall and the wall of the house.

I try to wake him up. His earphones fall out, he wakes up a bit, then tries to snuggle in more comfortably to the concrete. I shout at him a bit to wake up. He doesn't seem to want to budge.

So I give the local police station a ring to see if they'd have more luck shifting him or finding somewhere for him to go. They've had a report of a drunk somewhere nearby, but say they'll try to send someone around at some point. Fair enough.

Around an hour later, I have a look out the front window and see a police car sitting across the road. Aha, maybe community policing does exist after all. So I step out the front door, and just as I'm waiting to cross the road, a bunch of teenage girls with supersoakers soak me, including a jet of water aimed at my crotch followed by the classic "wot, you pissed yourself or summink?" comment. Nice. So I pop back inside, change my jeans, and cross the road. Just as I'm approaching the police car, it drives off.

It was at roughly this stage in the narrative that I started writing this post, and also that my doorbell rang. An Inspector McGuiness of the Met (who was Irish, and wore a shamrock on his stab-proof vest) and another officer in blue latex gloves had managed to awaken the sleeping giant and point him on his way.

Apparently he was stinking drunk and my front garden had seemed like the most comfortable place between Wood Green and Tottenham. I'm not sure I'd agree. (He didn't get very far either)

So I retrieved the dustpan and brush and cleaned bits of spicy chicken and lettuce from my front step.