Richard Baum

My leafleting excursions over the years have had me face to face with various excitements - wild dogs mainly, with the occasional even-wilder local resident not overly keen on St Mary’s Focus. I have grappled with gates so complicated that their design owed less to B&Q and more to the CERN Institute. And I have taken on every type of weather imaginable. I have fallen over, accidentally kicked cats, got stuck in hedges and had a memorable encounter with a goose. Once I ended up consulting health professionals after an untoward incident with a (now deceased) dog. But tonight I was almost murdered on the streets of Prestwich by an errant letterbox which, on reflection, I am sure was made entirely of razor blades and barbed wire.

My hand went into it with the same composition as normal - four fingers and a thumb, protected by skin. I am not sure what happened during the depositing of the leaflet, but my middle finger clearly got mauled by an alligator or something because when I removed it there was a chunk of skin missing the size of a 10p piece, and I was spurting blood like a macabre comedy clown. Honestly, it was like Apocalypse Now.

The blood-letting was concerning for a number of reasons. First, because I am told that copious blood loss is never a good sign. But mainly because at this time of year I don’t want to be dropping leaflets into people’s porches asking for their votes whilst at the same time staining the leaflets with threatening droplets of blood. “Vote Lib Dem or We’ll Kill You” is not the message we want to get across. Although, having seen the general direction that the local Labour leaflets are heading, I wouldn’t be surprised if their view of this tactic differs from mine. Anyone on the receiving end of my bloodied hand reaching into their hallway must’ve thought they were starring in a re-make of The Shining. If anyone was scared, I apologise. But after 15 minutes of unceasing bleeding, you probably weren’t as scared as I was.

So, in short, I was alarmed. I staggered on for a few houses, all the while dripping into a tissue that my mum (leafleting with me) provided. But once it had turned from white, through “raspberry ripple,” into pure red, and the blood still hadn’t stopped, I thought that some emergency help was required before I dropped dead on the street.

Step forward Kindly Local Resident.

My Mum approached a lady innocently filling her wheelie bin, and asked if she could spare a dying boy a piece of kitchen roll. Kitchen roll was just the start of it though, as I was led into the lady’s kitchen, past her startled husband in the lounge, and into a downstairs toilet where I was ordered to wash the wound whilst it was inspected, accompanied by worried intakes of breath and mumbled words like “deep” and “stitches.” Obviously the seriousness of the situation hadn’t occurred to the lady - in election week I am going to carry on leafleting even when I put my hand into a letterbox and a dog bites my arm off. “Deep” and “Stitches” mean nothing to me. 

Two bloodied kitchen towels and four plasters later, this domestic adaptation of Holby City was over and I was released back into the wild with only minor faintness, to continue my leafleting. I didn’t apologise at the time, but if the lady is reading this, please let me say sorry for dropping blood on the rug by your sink. It was an accident.

I don’t know who the lady was. Or her husband. They told me they were Lib Dems though, which was nice. I can only thank them for their genuine kindness. They could’ve sent me on my way with a couple of sheets of polyroll, but they didn’t. They welcomed me into their house without a second’s thought, and made sure I was alright. Joking aside, it was very kind indeed of them. And the gentleman’s remark that I should sue the owner of the letterbox has resonated somewhat with me and my still-stinging finger!

And such a brush with death makes me glad to be alive! It is only when one comes face to face with mortality that one truly appreciates the most important things in the world - like the dazzling revelation that I mustn’t die yet, because the last thing we need now is a by-election.

Rick