There was a tent in the orchard: An occupied tent. I knew it was there somewhere yet I couldn’t find it. The enticing, heady scent of wood smoke from a campfire was spiced with the wonderful aroma of coffee brewing in what I knew to be my treasured, yellow enamel coffee pot — veteran of countless campfires in a number of countries but … where on earth was the tent, and more importantly, its occupant?
Not by the top lily pond, not beneath the spreading boughs of the apple tree in the pumpkin patch, not nestled amongst apricot, plum trees and grape vines either. Suddenly it was dark, with a crimson full moon appearing and disappearing through scudding grey clouds. The wind was bitterly cold, carrying glistening blue snowflakes on its breath. I was barefoot and, fsor some reason, voiceless. There were pug marks in what was suddenly a deep blanket of snow, so there was a leopard in the orchard too. I was unarmed, as was the occupant of the invisible tent. A high pitched squealing rent the prickling atmosphere, something distinctly furry hit my face and, needless to say I woke up absolutely panic stricken to find a quivering Hell-Bella crouched on my head!
Heart pounding like a tom-tom drum, breath coming in laboured gasps, I groped around for the torch which wasn’t where it was supposed to be and encountered Lucy, the smallest of the miniature dachshunds, cowering on top of books crammed in to a most convenient shelf built into the head board. Another ghoulish scream, accompanied by thudding bangs and crashes, reverberated through the ceiling directly above the bed and sent Bitsy and Pedro fleeing for their lives out through the open door in to the living room with me close on their heels guided by electric blue flashes of lightening. Joe, Mrs Joe and Biggles decided to add shrieks and whistles to the hullabaloo and I tripped and fell over a squeaky rubber duck lying in wait on the kitchen rug. Cursing, loudly, I grabbed the battery powered emergency light as, as is often the case these days, the dammed power was off, selected a large wooden staff from behind the front door and, screaming like a banshee, charged in to battle.
Mungo the mongoose had beamed himself into a tiny bit of crawl space in the roof again and he was not alone. By the sound of it there were mice, maybe even rats, in there too and Mungo was in attack mode. Banging on the ceiling with the staff I silenced them for a moment or two but didn’t, as I had hoped, send them beating a retreat back to the great outdoors where they belong. I banged again... climbing on and off furniture as I went as one side of the ceiling is a bit difficult to reach. Bang, crash, wallop, bang, bonk, thump and, eventually silence. With a sigh of relief I crawled back in to bed, all four frightened dogs on top of me, and had just got comfortable when the circus resumed. I banged, crashed and thumped harder this time, crawled back in to the dog sandwich and managed all of a five minute snooze before the bloody beasties started up yet again. It was 2.45 am with a raging thunderstorm going on outside; I had to be up at 5 am to get things organised prior to setting off for Nathia Gali at 7 am and I was getting more than a little annoyed to put it lightly. Grabbing the staff I stood in the centre of the rumpled bed and gave the ceiling an almighty thwack, then leapt back in horror as the staff went straight through the roof. Shit, shit and double shit … the beasties might fall in and the ensuing pandemonium didn’t bear thinking about!
3 am found me sawing up a piece of plywood commandeered from the back of a framed painting, searching through hoarded collections of old nails and tacks for something of a suitable size, then balancing on the bed, hammer in one hand, plywood in the other, nails between my teeth and short of another hand to aim the light. I didn’t do a very good job so I ended up using miles of insulation tape to keep the patch in place. I had just sunk back in to bed, after resetting the alarm clock to give me another precious 15 minutes of sleep when Mungo, unless there is more than one mongoose on the premises, decided to investigate the repair from his side. Gulp! Not wanting to make another hole in the ceiling, I grabbed the alarm clock, held it up, fiddled with the timer until it shrilled in glass shattering splendor and … victory! Mungo left!
There was no point, since it was almost 4.30 am, of even thinking of going back to sleep. A quick cup of coffee and up the ladder to the roof was the only possible thing to do. I am in fact petrified of walking about on the roof but …. there was a job to do. Corrugated iron roofs have a number of drawbacks: They have to be regularly patrolled, hammer at the ready, for loose nails as no matter how hard you bang them home they slowly but surely rise up, presumably the corrugated sheets expand and contract according to temperature and I know, to my cost, that sheet edges can lift in a gale force wind. They also act as amplifiers for staccato hailstone attacks, so much so that interior conversation is impossible and there really isn’t much difference during heavy rain either. Rain water and snow melt inevitably finds a way inside every now and then, dripping through in maliciously chosen spots like directly on to the music system which now, like its buddy the computer, habitually sleep in the waterproof confines of bicycle capes just to be on the safe side. The question now though, was where the hell did Mungo & Co get in?
No holes in the roof, no raised edges on the corrugated sheets: Absolutely no sign of forced entry. Back down the ladder and then up it again to check under the eaves. Zilch.
“Asalaam Alaikum,” called a female voice. It was Olive Oil balancing on the slope of her own roof. At this juncture I must explain that our roofs join, but the walls in-between our houses are separated by a three foot gap only accessible from inside her ceiling not mine. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought the goats had climbed on to my roof again, they get on from the top of the bank at the back, so came to chase them off.”
“Checking for holes” I explained. “There were ‘things’ in the roof during the night.”
“Yes. I know” she replied. “I heard them and I heard you banging and screaming too. I didn’t come to check because my daughter-in-law said not to bother as you’d probably just shoot whatever it was and the problem would be solved.” With a shrug of her bony shoulders and a toss of her half hennaed grey plait, she added “No point in you being up here though. Your roof’s fine. They get in through a hole in the back of my house, the room we don’t use since part of it collapsed in the big quake. They come in there, climb into my roof and cross into yours along the roof beams.”
“Why don’t you close up the hole in your wall then?” I asked.
“What for? We don’t use that room anymore,” was her response as she disappeared over her central roof ridge, sliding nimbly down and going off to milk the other plague of my life … her obnoxious buffalo.
With neighbours like this I ask you, who on earth needs enemies?!
Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, July 31st, 2011.
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Now that's a question worth a million! I might say this is the height of insensitivity of your neighbor. By the way, I was never pleased with our former neighbours and was glad when they moved.
Well if I were you, I would have given some money to my neighbors to get their roof rebuilt! So I say with neighbors like you, who on the earth needs enemies?