I've trained my very own "Captain Flint" to sit on the gate and screech "It's a bargain; it's a bargain" at any car that finds its way this far down the lane. The results so far: three bids for the parrot; none for the property!
Things should pick up during the 'Open House' across the lane and I shall replenish my flyers as fast as they're taken away.
I always like to state the obvious, so I glued the letters "TAKE ONE" on the box. "TAKE ONLY ONE" would be better but didn't fit. In any case, it reminds me too much of the real estate agent up north who had one of those "Please take one" baskets outside his shopfront but the basket was always empty. When I walked into the shop to ask for a brochure, I suggested that he fill up the empty basket outside. "Ah, yes," he said, "I don't put any more out there. People keep taken them away."
Anyway, it wouldn't make much difference to the local village idiot who seems to have escaped from the Mental Health Unit at Liverpool Hospital. This individual, who has been CCTVed and YouTubed to facilitate quick re-admission, delights in snatching away fistfuls of flyers, tearing them to bits, and bowerbirdlike depositing them in "nests" in the vicinity. "Take your medication, Village Idiot, not my flyers!"
Mental health can be quite an issue in the country! ☹
