The Great Trek

Luky;

ON THE day the removal van arrived for our Great Trek, the car got a puncture.

"I'll go on in the van", my husband said.

"You go to the garage to have it mended."

I agreed, but then he had another idea:

"Why don't you leave the new house to us, while you and Gloria stay behind and put the finishing touches to this one?

I'd hate the people moving in to say we left the house dirty."

"They'll say that anyway", I argued, because housewives seldom agree with each other's ways - just as dressmakers hardly ever approve of other dressmakers' sewing and secretaries generally dislike the typing of their colleagues.

"Then they'll have to say it without reason", my husband concluded loftily, and got into the front of the furniture van.

On the blink

"Okay, Gloria", I said to my friend, who'd come to help us out.

"You start polishing, and when I've had the car fixed I'll come after you with the polisher."

So gesè, so gedaan.

Erna, my well-loved neighbour of eight years' standing, lent me her polisher once the car had been repaired, and Gloria and I were getting on very nicely when a smell of burning assailed what my second daughter used to call my nostrich: Erna's polisher was on the blink.

I hadn't had a quarrel with Erna in eight years, and I wasn't going to start one now.

For the record, Erna and I got on so well because we had made a pact that we could pack off each other's children when they got on our nerves without maternal comeback.

Parting gift

So into the car I went with the polisher to the industrial area, and I cooled my heels for two hours while an apprentice worked on the polisher.

"That will be thirteen rand fifty", he said.

"But it would have happened anyway; the part I replaced was quite worn out."

"It's a parting gift for an angelic neighbour", I told him.

Gloria and I left the old house shining like a mirror.

When we got to the new house, we found it in chaos.

Two men were putting down wall-to-wall carpeting, my youngest was howling her head off, and my husband looked frustrated.

Amusement

Four days of washing had acculumulated, so I decided to load the machine.

It must have been damaged on its way to the new kitchen, because it spewed out sheets full of mud, and then went out of action completely.

I raced back to the electrical shop, only to be told that the boss was in Virginia for the day.

Back home, I took out the vacuum cleaner.

Perhaps I should have talked to it first, like people talk to plants:

"Now listen, boy, I expect neither initiative nor perfection from you, just a little co-operation."

But I have enough people around me to coax without wasting psychology on domestic appliances - and so the vacuum cleaner spluttered to a halt.

Back I went once more to the electrical shop, much to the amusement of the women working there.

New disasters

Twice I had to take down all the curtains in the house because I hadn't put them up properly: and that was a bigger job than it sounds, since one wall was practically all window.

The carpenter arrived with henchmen, van and tools to put up my trellises on Saturday afternoon, and found the timber people had failed to deliver.

As I drove back from the timber people on Monday morning, a heavily loaded lorry was travelling towards me.

As it drew close, I heard a loud clanking sound and a huge steel frame fell off, floated sideways, and then dropped down in front of my car.

Not a fast driver as a rule, I was just able to dodge it by swerving to the left.

Had I been two seconds closer to the lorry, the frame would have gone right into my window and probably cut off my head.

How precious

Feeling absolutely exalted, I drove home singing.

There's nothing like missing death by inches - sorry, centimetres - to remind one how precious life is, and how the little hitches and unpleasantnesses which occur along the way are only as important as we let ourselves consider them to be.