A GREAT BLOW

THE ULTIMATE BLOW

Last months high winds which brought down trees and de-roofed animal houses all over the district created havoc at my place as well. Situated on a ridge I got the full blast from the windstorm. I had just passed through Snake Valley when the first big gusts struck and for a few kilometres I was ducking falling trees and branches careening across the road in front of me like a rugby forward. (I’m sorry if I hail from the north.)

Being nearly blown off my feet, I’m big enough to withstand 200 Km/hr, as I opened and closed the front gate I was halfway up the driveway and had nearly reached the shelter of home when all of a sudden an unseen tornado hit my garden shed. Without as much as an ‘Allah Akbah’ the 9M2 structure lifted vertically off the ground and blew itself apart like a hand-grenade.

I had to gun the car up the drive to miss the dozens of bits of wall and roof and connecting pieces as they flew across the ground taking huge divots out of the lawn. Something white and fuzzy bounced across the front of the car following the horizontal rain which left a deep skid-mark in the bonnet.

The household detritus and garden tools and sheep feed stored within the building sat still for a few moments before it too began to scatter itself to the four corners of the property. The willy-willy was blowing all my stuff willy-nilly. The wind was so strong I found the heavy double bed size inner spring mattress about 40 Metres to the east and the single bed foam mattress against a tree another 40 metres past that.

Heavy tools stayed where they were but a box of white elephant donations emptied itself piece by piece along the eastern boundary. Ice-cream containers filled with what I describe as ‘things I might need’ and screw top jars of ‘smaller things I might need some time this century’ fell out of the shelving as it collapsed backwards into the void left by a shed wall. Paint tins of various sizes with contents anywhere between 2 Lt and two spoons full rolled hither and thither across the bit of flooring that was left.

As I turned towards the house with the wind astern I espied in my rear-view mirror what could only be described as a meteor shower of sheep pellets headed towards the back of the Ute. I gunned the car again this time into the carport but I was too late, like hailstones I was pelted with a mixture of poo and malt pellets.

The sheep were wondering the paddock with monstrous comb-overs. Maxine who sometimes can’t tell her tail from her elbow sported a really nice Emo style hairdo.
As usual Dumb and Dumber the two Alpacas just looked startled, a pretty normal countenance for them.

Later that afternoon I got a call from one of my neighbours to tell me that Hayu the lamb had landed on their front patio. He joked about flying pigs between gales of laughter and asked me to come and pick him up. I mentioned that he was only a foster lamb why could he not have been blown back to his natural flock. That explained the white blur and the skid mark. But I picked him up anyway, you can’t leave youngsters with strangers.

Days later I was still collecting up bits of shed a hundred metres from where they originated and sweeping dung from the back of the Ute.

Sensibly I have now purchased a 7 Metre Shipping Container weighing in at two and a half tons to replace the shed. Why don’t the retailers tell you that these lightweight metal shells are referred to as ‘blow-aways’ before they sell them to you.



But all this is not really about Max is it. So I’d better get on with her story. She’s has been acting a bit political of late in fact she has become like a university student and chosen to take to the left of politics. Somewhere between Lenin and Kevin I think.

The final straw, which is ever so slowly sending me around the twist, was the anti-xenophobe project she inaugurated this week. It all started with the arrival of Fatima and Farsi the two ‘coloured’ Merino’s last month.
As soon as they arrived the locals gathered around them, stared, stffed the same place dogs do, smelt a hint of Tabouli and decided not to have anything to do with them.

Of course the locals do not include Max. I worry about her as she gets far too friendly with the wrong animals, I fear she’s going to have too much to drink one night and forever after will be unable to say with any honesty “I’m a lady I do ladylike things”.

She sauntered up to me on Saturday and dropped at my feet an article by Susie O’Brien in the Age about Kinder Pupils being urged to ‘challenge bias and discrimination’ as part of new teaching guidelines. ‘You’ve got to be kidding of course’ I thought as I picked up the partially chewed article, ‘little people don’t understand the intangible quit yet.’

But then, looking at Butch and then over towards Kebab (who will be living in the freezer soon), I thought that maybe if this lot can understand the concept of ‘funny looking sheep’ so could the under 5’s?

Oh! Bother – run out of space as usual so that story will have to wait until the final episode next month.

GODFREY ZONE