Woke up this morning with a definite sinking feeling – most definitely was not looking forward to telling Mr Kuiper we had got our car stuck at the bottom of the orchard. However, the 3 of us had agreed the night before that we would present a united front + all see him together, so I trotted over to Rob’s cabin to wake him. He came over for breakfast, and then the deed that could not be put off any longer was done. In fact, it turned out to be remarkably painless. Rob simply asked him if we could borrow a tractor + some rope, + that matter-of-fact approach seemed to be the best way of handling it. Mr K didn’t, as I had feared he might, blow his top – he was just concerned that we might have run over some of his props. When he did see the car, he was a bit old-womanish about it, + didn’t think his tractor would be able to shift it. As it was, it came out with no trouble at all. He asked us not to drive thro’ the orchard again.
That little problem sorted out, Val + Rob went off to work, while I had another cup of tea + some aspirin (I was still suffering from the over-indulgence of the night before) + cleared the cabin up – it was in a right mess – = then joined Val for a day’s picking. Things went pretty slowly all day, but we still managed to pick 5 bins, which was pretty fair.
In the evening, we had a risotto – my least favourite meal out of all the ones we’ve cooked so far, mainly because it tasted Chinese, + I find that sort of Chinese rice stew bland + boring. And then, we all being knackered, after 2 late nights, Rob went home at 9, + Val + I read for a while in bed before sleep. I also managed to find a different radio station. Our clock radio has been a boon, but up to now we have only really found one station… at all. It’s CKIQ in Kelowna, + is OK, especially in the morning, for a History of Rock ‘n Roll they’ve been running, but on the bad side, every week night at 9 o’clock till 1 in the morning, they have a programme called Open Phone Canada – a nationwide phone-in hosted by a dick called John Gilbert. It’s really got on our nerves this programme, being on every night. JG confused the names of Anwar Sadat + Yasser Arafat!
It was Rob whose diplomatic skills kept us out of Mr K’s bad books. Not sure how I managed to escape early morning picking, and then I had the nerve to say I was starting a day’s picking!
Apologies for my sweeping condemnation of Chinese food, obviously born out of lack of knowledge of the real thing.
And I suppose JG was our first experience of a shock-jock. Even now, forty years on, we don’t really have such in the UK, with the BBC holding sway, but there are worrying signs of importing such phenomena from North America.
Leave a Reply