Ann and I go food shopping in the morning. Christmas rush is now starting and industry in Knysna officially shuts down at the end of the day. As we head into town, for the first time, we hit traffic on the main road a long way out from the centre, and it’s only going to get worse from now on apparently.
First we go looking for Christmas decorations and lights for the tree. Christmas trees are obviously not big business here and it takes us a bit of time to find a shop which sells anything tasteful and isn’t either gaudy or made of plastic. Laden down with decorations and food shopping, we stagger back to Kloppers, the large home and electrical store, where Ann buys a blender, and we settle down to wait for Terry to give us a lift back to the house.
We’ve only just got back when the girl from the Jewellers phones to say that the setting for the earrings is ready and would I like to go down to OK them. It’s a good job I do. Even though I have supplied them with a photograph and all the dimensions, the jeweller’s interpretation (and I didn’t think I had left any room for ‘interpretation’) is different to mine, and I have to get him to change them. I will probably be back there tomorrow, checking them again.
While I am the jewellers, Mike goes to the boat. Unfortunately the freezer has stopped working again and he has arranged for the guy to come back tomorrow and have another look. Obviously, although the gas leak was fixed, there’s another one. There’s always something with boats!! Mike also fails to fix the lazy jacks and needs to order some new parts for those too. Why does nothing ever go smoothly?
Late in the afternoon, Ann, Terry and I go over to see their friend Barry, who has told them that he has chopped down a Christmas tree for them from the forest behind his house. As we pull onto the drive, there is a spindly branch of pine and we hope that this isn’t it and is just an off cut of theirs instead. When Barry says it’s our tree, Ann and I burst out laughing. “Call that a tree?” Terry is more polite. Barry then says that if it isn’t to our liking, we can go and chop another one down and goes and gets a saw.
Ann and I pull out of this particular activity, and instead push Terry forward. The problem is that the ‘forest’ (not actually a forest but a few trees on the hillside) is behind an electric fence (although Barry assures us it’s never switched on) and there’s only about 10 inches clearance underneath in just one spot and the land slopes sharply almost directly behind it and away up the hill. Terry balks but Ann and I egg him on while Barry chats unhelpfully about snakes.
Terry gets down on his back and starts to wriggle himself underneath this 10 inch gap. Now I’m not being rude, but no one would ever describe Terry as being anything but large. At over 6 foot and the build to match it, 10 inches isn’t much of a gap. When he’s half way through and the wiring is at groin level, I helpfully remind him that now is not the time to get an erection!
Once through, we direct him to the first tree we like the look of, but as it’s the only one on the hill like it, he doesn’t want to cut it down, so we direct him further up to the next one. A few minutes later and … timber! Down it comes and Terry hauls it back down the hill to the fence. That’s the easy bit done. Now he has to try and lob it over an 8 foot fence. A few yards down there’s a bit of a lump in the ground next to one of the iron fence braces and he manages to throw it over far enough for Barry to be able to hook it with the saw and pull it over to our side.
As Ann and I drag the tree across the garden and drive to the car, we hear Terry shouting in the distance that now we’ve got what we want we are leaving him in the wilderness, all alone behind an electric fence, but somehow he manages to get back underneath and we all join up in Barry’s lounge for a drink to celebrate.
Once we get it back to Ann’s, however, we’re not sure if we’ve done the right thing. The bloody tree is enormous, both tall as well as wide. I don’t know if we’ll ever find a bucket to put it in and if we put cement in to keep it in place, we’ll probably never be able to move it. Terry could be up that hill again tomorrow!!!
Photo: Terry and the monster tree in the garage
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