ONe of my current jobs is canvassing, and I was trotting round some nice sedate suburban estate today when I heard a baby crying. I then noticed that there was a car parked on a drive, with a small child (about 18 months or so) in a car seat in the back, crying - but no sign of anyone else. SO I thought, oh, someone's just run into the house with the shopping/has just had to scoot back in to pick up a forgotten Iggle Piggle or something, and carried on knocking at doors (no one was home to receive my stellar sales pitch...). However, 10 minutes later the kid was still crying and there was no sign of anyone, so I knocked on the door of the house and said very politely that there was a baby crying in the car. And the lady who answered said, oh, has he woken up, he was asleep and I was putting the shopping away, came straight out and got the child. BTW she was at least 50 years old and clearly the child's grandmother (she said, oh come to Nanna to the child, who looked healthy and well-cared for) so I think it was probably
that she came from the era when you just put babies in prams in the garden all day anyway - and this was a very nice, peaceful, almost rural estate.
And I think I did the right thing in knocking on the door (and if I hadn't been able to find anyone in the house I would have knocked on neighbours' doors and only if I couldn' raise anyone I might have called the police) but I wonder if I might have been being too overprotective or officious.