The pavement again

Here's the scene from chapter 1 again, a year on. It's an example of how things might go and I'm not promising it.

It's a Thursday evening and you're putting the bins out. The woman from number fourteen waves and comes over. The fair is a week on Saturday, they're short again, and you were so good on the tombola last year. "You couldn't, could you?" She smiles and waits.

The tension arrives exactly as it did before. I'd like to be clear about that. Nothing in this book makes it go away. Your chest still tightens and "yes, of course" is still sitting there ready. What's changed is that you know what the tension is. You know it started five seconds ago, that it will be gone in a minute whatever you say, and that it tells you nothing about the Saturday.

"Let me check and come back to you tomorrow evening," you say.

"Course," she says. "No rush." She goes back to her bins. The thing you dreaded for years is over in a few seconds, and nothing bad has happened.

At the kitchen table you move the date to tomorrow. Would you run a tombola tomorrow from eight till four? You would not. You picture the slip of paper and tick no. Then you ask what the request is for. You like the street and you like the fair. You'd be glad to have done something for it, as long as the something was small. So you write this.

"Thanks for asking me again. I can't do the day this year, I need that Saturday. I could come at eight and help put the tables out for an hour if that's useful, and I'll bring a cake. Hope it's a good one."

You read it through once and send it. Your heart goes a bit. Twelve minutes later your phone buzzes. "No problem at all. Tables at eight would be brilliant, nobody ever wants to do that bit. See you then."

On the Saturday you carry trestle tables for fifty minutes. You buy five tombola tickets from a man you've never met, who is plainly having a lovely time, and you win a tin of peaches. You're home by half past nine with the whole day in front of you.

They won't all go like that. Some replies will be shorter than you'd like. Some weeks you'll give the old yes and have to go back the next morning, and once in a while you'll get the judgment wrong in the other direction and wish you'd gone. That's what deciding things is like. But you'll be the one deciding, at your kitchen table, with both sides of the trade in view. The four seconds won't be deciding for you any more.

If you take one thing from this book, take the holding line. Say it aloud now, once, so that it's been in your mouth before you need it. "Let me check and come back to you." The next time someone asks you for a Saturday, that's all you have to say. You can do everything else later, sitting down, in your own time.