Instead of travel tales, some nonsense about a rebellious paver...

Around the corner from my house there is a piece of pavement. It looks just like any other paver* in this area: grey and rectangular, with a black smudge of old gum on its back. But this paver is different. This paver uses its ‘ordinary’ looks to disguise a mischievous temperament. This paver is tired of being stepped upon and has discovered a way to wreak revenge.

He enjoys doing it (you can tell from the bricky ‘kerplunk’ of his laugh) because it is both immediately destructive and yet so ‘tiny’ an irritation that the victim almost immediately forgets about it. Looking identical to his innocent cousins (who adhere to the paver status quo), he is able to outwit the same set of forgetful feet again and again.

On rainy days, when most pavers close their eyes, put on a grim face and let the water drops fall on them and then roll away like clear marbles, he wriggles and shimmies between his neighbours, opening up his borders and letting the rain tickle his sides and work its way down to fill the grubby pots and pans he keeps underneath his belly.

Once the rain stops and the other pavers get on with the job of waiting to be stepped on, he stops wriggling and tries to blend in. He pretends that he is waiting to service a suede-booted foot with a compliant solidity, but really he is quietly manoeuvring a series of pumps and spouts into his pots and pans.

He is well practised. Even his neighbours can’t tell that he’s doing anything, and the approaching suede boots (or sometimes the ballet-flats with inadequate border patrol) assume that this upcoming patch of pavers will exercise their civil service as quietly and uncomplainingly as the last.

He is also helped by his position. Somehow he was able, years ago, to negotiate his way into the enviable (yet long-winded) real-estate position of ‘Central Paver on Well-Frequented Corner of Street Leading to/from Tube Station’. He is popular because of this location – like an all-you-can-eat dinner buffet at a tiny airport where the only other option is cold sandwiches of questionable freshness at a newsagent.

So the suede boots and under-prepared ballet flats tramp his way. He is the most convenient option.

He sees them coming and readies himself. He stiffens his back and lowers his hand to the pumps in the pots. The feet clomp closer, stepping without a care in the world across the obliging grey backs of his cousins. Once they are two pavers away, he sucks in his breath, swirls his stockpile of water marbles and then, when the foot lands on him, he releases his breath, opens all of his borders and squeezes his pumps, spurting a backwards waterfall of brown liquid up into the air. His technique is so well perfected that this waterfall never fails to perform three or four quick somersaults before landing – with the same inevitability that Wednesday follows Tuesday or regret follows a rampant Terry’s Chocolate Orange binge – squarely on the unsuspecting shoe.

He realeases his kerplunk of a laugh at the same time: his pavery equivalent of a criminal’s calling card: letting those suede shoes know they’ve been had yet again.

It echoes in the ears of the boots, and they curse their rickety memory and vow to themselves that next time, next time, they will remember this anarchist paver and re-route their steps.

But here they come again, on their way home from the shops, and the paver stiffens his back, shakes his head and chuckles.

It’s always just too easy.


*Apparently the British don’t say ‘paver’. I have had arguments over whether this word can mean ‘a piece of pavement’ alongside ‘one who paves’. Well, one argument. According to the infallible yourdictionary.com, both meanings are correct, so I’m going to stick with my colonial language perversions and sprinkle ‘pavers’ all over this blog entry with my giant pavery salt-shaker. Paver.