MAKE AND REND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 653, 11 January 1952, Page 8

MAKE AND REND

by

G. leF.

Y.

HE southern section of Vancouver Island is populated by retired British army and navy Officers living outside~ their incomes, practising British simple lifers living off their gardens, and a few Canadian tradesmen fattening off the British. My host was a simple lifer with sixteen acres of garden and orchard on the shores of Lake Unpronounceable. "How do you like life in Canada?" my hostess asked at dinner the first evening. "Settling down all right?" "Oh, fine,’ I said. "We New Zealanders are very adaptable." "So I’ve always heard," my host said, "and very handy at make and mend." "They make anything," I said, speaking for New Zealanders other. than my-.

self, "build their own houses, mend their tractors-always busy at something." "You hear that, Perry?" my host said to his five-year-old son. "Do you think we might have a New Zealander putting shingles on the shed roof tomorrow?" "I surrre do," Perry said, removing a cantaloupe from his face for a moment. "Spoken like a true Canadian," I said, with not the most candid of smiles. His mother laughed. "I can hardly wait to see the faces of my people in England when they hear his accent," she said. "He’s a real Canadian." "IT can hardly wait to see those shingles going on." said her husband jovially. I surrre can, I thought, remembering my black record as tradesman-about-the-home in New Zealand. BRAD MARTINS, the local carpenter, who was giving us half a day for | six dollars, arrived early next morn-

ing and we made our way to the shed roof. "It’s a simple operation," my host said, offering me a hammer and several hundred fine shingle nails; "we just work up towards the ridge pole, in rows allowing plenty of overlap. Anybody used to tools can pick it up in a minute." "Most of our roofs are corrugated iron," I said, putting down the hammer before picking up a bundle of cedar shingles. The hammer slid merrily off the roof, heavy end first: "I guess you got flat roofs in Noo Zealand," Brad said. We put in a pretty good morning’s work. Brad did two rows to our, one, but he wore a special holster for his

hammer and thus cut his retrieving time to nil. He also drove a nail with two blows, every time. The first hour I split three shingles and my left thumb, and did a number of ascents and* descents of the roof by different routés. My host made meticulous measurements and set some pretty shingles, about one to Brad’s four. Brad finished off the roof by 11 a.m. "There’s' a fence that should be repaired down by the lake," my host said. "The heifers are getting through from next door. Could you lend us a hand there for an hour?" "Naw," Brad said, "I have to go work at the house." "IT suppose that’s the house he’s building himself," my host said, as, Brad purred off down the drive in his. Buick convertible. "What sort of fences do you have in New Zealand .. .?" E collected cocoons of wire and went down to the shores of Lake Unpronounceable, Perry riding the (continued on next page

(continued from previous page) wheelbarrow and swinging death blows with a hammer. The fence was well flattened and overgrown by thorn bushes. We started to clear these with slashing and grubbing tools, while Perry swung on what wire was left, and the heifers eyed us with smug unconcern. My host, a kind but credulous man, insisted on consulting me about tactical details: the line of the fence, now, was it on the best line? I made a short reconnaissance flight into the thorn bushes to obtain information. I returned safely to base, but sustained some _ material damage. "It seems the only practical line," I said. "You surrre have a hole in your shirt," Perry said. The vicinity of the fence gradually took on the aspect that forward areas must have worn when Canadian Pacific were pushing through their transcontinental railway. Coils of wire, cut, recut and discarded, snaked everywhere, blood and thorn clippings littered the rocks, Perry saw to it that no tools of the trade were ever handy, and the heifers meditatively chewed the leather glove we had intended for handling barbed wire. At lunch time we buried our dead ;and retired from the battlefield temporarily. When we returned to the slaughter in the afternoon we found the heifers had flattened a further section and were standing in our property chewing wisps of a paper bag that had once held staples. We ignored them, drove a post a few yards out in the waters of Lake and stretched: double chicken wite from it to a tree. Then,

cheered by the way this stayed vertical, we attacked the other two sections, aiming at a four wire masterpiece. We de‘vised an unheard of means of straining the wire with a wrecking bar, a tree, and a shifting spanner, and had one section done in less than an hour, "We should get the heifers back before we put up the last section,’ my host said. "I suppose you’re used to working with cattle." I wrapped the fragments of my shirt about me, put Perry out on a cast to the right, and took the lake shore beat myself. "I see ’em," Perry said, out of sight in the scrub. He let out two terrible cries, and I thought he was gored and trampled, but he was merely urging them down to me, the expert. Three of the four heifers broke past me in a second, thundered along the lake shore and carried our chicken wire before them as if it had been a hair net. The fourth heifer circled in a clearing, shaking her head. I advanced, she dithered, put her head down at me and then backed away into the four wire masterpiece. "No!" cried my host, covering his eyes. The heifer got her back legs in between the bottom and second strand, kicked out heartily, wheeled and trotted off after her sisters, trailing tinkling strands of glory. "The resources of our civilisation seem to have come to an end," my host said. "I think Brad could put this up in half a day if we gave him a hand." "He surrre could," Perry said. "Spoken like a true Canadian," my host and I said in chorus, -E