Today I had the misfortune of visiting Bunnings. It is a hardware chain that sells everything you can imagine. Well, except food, unless you count the small café in the corner with a view of the serried ranks of over stocked shelves. I remember my brother-in-law spending days at his local Bunnings just wandering around. I have no idea how close to brain-dead you’d have to be to do that.
Or, as Fi suggested, maybe he was off having an affair and Bunnings was an excuse. I guess that’s plausible, given he did have an affair and he doesn’t have a lot of imagination.
Bunnings was awful. Massive with no personality. When I told one young employee that it was the cause of the death of small independent shops, he replied that there are smaller Bunnings outlets as well. Okay, he was about 16, spotty and remarkably innocent but surely his parents must have told him about the wonderful world of the little traders. Not everyone wants to be an anonymous cog in a remarkably souless chain.
It was all just too American for my tastes.
The worst thing about Bunnings, today, though, was how they refused to take back two gas cylinders that Bob had for the barbi. Normally, you would drop off an empty and take away a full one. Great idea that should work well. Except when their cages are full.
Outside there are cages full of gas cylinders. Once these cages are full, they don’t want to know you. Impossible to take the cylinders, we were told. My suggestion that we would just dump them somewhere, was met with a sort of relief that we’d stop bothering them with ridiculous questions. In the UK these intractable and unhelpful types are called Jobsworths.
Our awful trip to Bunnings followed another truck full of removalists at the house, this time picking up the study furniture and piano for delivery to Budgewoi. Unlike yesterday, though, this truck was massive. So massive that it had to sit halfway along the drive because of the trees lining it.
That’s Fi, directing traffic. All went well and, by mid-afternoon, everything had been delivered and the house was looking a little more bare.
Something else Fi did today was regarding two very large pieces of hummingbird cake. I admit it was very naughty and we shouldn’t have done it however, she didn’t have to dob us in to Mirinda tonight.
It was after we’d dropped off another Vinnie’s load and before we went to Woolies. Obviously, S.A.L.T. was in our way and it felt wrong to go around it. We fully intended to have just a coffee. One of the guys working there suggested we would love his hummingbird cake and that was it.
He was right but that’s scant relief when weighed up against my snitch of a sister-in-law.
After our naughty outing, we headed to the lock-up to check out where everything will live for about a year before being distributed around the globe. It’s very much like the storage unit we used to have in Farnham. It will all be fine.
Back at the house, stuffed full of cake, we packed boxes and generally looked busy until dinner time when we ate some more of the vast quantities of Indian food leftover from yesterday.
I took this photo while Archie and I watched the removalists walking back and forth from truck to house.
It’s a view I’ll always remember of the house at Dural.
