The canvassing experience acted as a kind of unintended initiation rite which somehow, by the skin of my teeth, I’d managed to pass. In the days following, I would hear my father, when telling the story of ‘poor old Jo’s adventures’, use the phrase ‘chip off the old block’ as in, after supplying the details of my entrapment, he’d laugh and say, ‘But she stood her ground…kept going…a chip off the old block…’

To continue reading this instalment click here