I did the only sensible thing

It was a stinking hot day and I had only just got home. I don’t know many people in the new ‘burb. Correction, I don’t know anyone in the new ‘burb. So when I saw a young male blither on to the property, dump his bike down on the lawn and stumble around on shaky legs, I thought ‘‘Hello, hello, what’s all this then?’’

So like a sensible woman on her own I opened the front door, locked it behind me and approached the yoof, saying ‘‘Hi there, can I help?’’

He had a nice face, but his eyes were glazed over and he looked at me as if I was the most preposterous thing he’d ever seen in his life. I introduced myself and asked what his name was, to which he muttered something vaguely intelligible and lifted a pathetic paw to shake my hand.

I asked him if he’d taken a drug and if so, what was it, as I gestured to him to sit down in the shade of a tree. Then I went inside, poured a glass of water from the tap and took it back out to him.

From my assessment, he could have been high on drugs; was having some sort of mental health episode; or was severely dehydrated.

We sat under the tree for a while shooting the breeze, albeit silently, till suddenly he looked at me sharply as if I had only just materialised, and asked what had happened.

I recounted to him the last 20 minutes and he looked appalled, got up, put on his backpack, and wheeled his bike off down the road.

Half an hour later I saw the bike untethered and leaning up against a shop, but no sign of the lad. Very mysterious.

Two days later, after the lawnmower man had been, a cellphone appeared on the veranda. I presumed the phone was his, but later concluded he’d found it in the grass and, believing it to be the home owner’s, had kindly left it on the veranda.

There were two numbers you could access on the phone so I dialled the one that said ‘‘Mumma Bear’’ and left a message. A woman with a posh voice quickly replied, asking who I was and what did I want.

And so started a long and very roundabout conversation as I related the story of the blithering bicyclist fetched up on my property. I asked if I was speaking to Mumma Bear, to which she replied an emphatic ‘‘no’’.

Apparently she rented out rooms and may very well have recently rented one to the lad I described. But she was at pains to assure me that she only rented to sensible boys, and this boy, if he was indeed her tenant, had presented to her as a very sensible boy.

Apparently, during his audition for the lodgings, he had disclosed to her a passion for biking in the hills. She divulged that she lived in the country and often came across dehydrated cyclists suffering from sunstroke, which she believed her possible tenant was, in this case, suffering from.

Feeling as if we were role-playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, crossed with the assignation point of Dr Sutch, I agreed to leave the phone in my letter box on the proviso that she would make the necessary connections for it to be picked up by a third party.

Now that I am au fait with the phenomenon of dehydrated, blown-off-course cyclists, I will make sure to keep chilled water in the fridge, a rug close by for snoozes on the lawn, and have ordered a Florence Nightingale outfit from the catalogue. It’s the sensible thing to do.