Getting Naked

Once I was committed to replacing the grass on the “left wing” and getting the pitch right there was no stopping it. We had initially decided to just do the left wing, but once all that grass came off and we had adjusted all the poles to a better angle, the rest of the roof began to look its age.

Right back in the beginning, twenty something years earlier, the Tree House had been literally in the tree. It started off as a box in the tree, with plans to go up higher, into the branches. They say with age comes wisdom, but perhaps we just become more practical.

Gibson, the thatcher, was game to convert the whole thing into a bright and shiny new work of art, as long as I could cover the additional man hours.

There was certainly no shortage of grass, at the end of winter, the fields of gold (as Sting sometimes sings) are everywhere. The price of grass had escalated since my last thatching venture but then the gold price has also moved along a bit. Not that I have any gold, just an observation on fiat currency.

More and more grass is coming off revealing the bare poles, it is like rewinding a Bob the Builder movie, in slow motion. There is also a growing pile of grass around the house now, as if it is sitting in a nest. There is something liberating about living in a climate where you can consider that perhaps there is no need for a roof at all, just the shade of the giant msasa tree will do nicely.

Zimbabwe in October is such a climate. Looking up at the blue sky and feeling the gentle stillness of the msasa forest, it is easy is to be convinced that it will always be like this. I remind myself that from my own past experience, I know it will not always be like this.

Besides, Catherine has been asking me what about windows, so I guess it was just a passing thought. Now I think more about it what I would really like is a retractable roof, perhaps that's something for the future. Right now, we need to get this roof back on again.

Catherine's reservations about the lack of windows, not to mention doors, have been dispelled (for the moment) and the family are booked to fly into Harare in a couple of weeks. As anyone knows, who has embarked on a building operation, of any scale whatsoever, once you start you can't stop, until you run out of money.

I was just getting to the end of the deconstruction phase, so there was no danger of that.