Cutting the elm

On Friday, we finally started cutting up the Chinese Elm which had split in two and toppled over. Regular readers will remember this pic from the blog titled 'The day gravity kicked in' - and while the tree was the same, all the leaves had fallen off.

The National Trust arranged for a fellow to come with a chainsaw, and in no time at all the chips were flying......

In addition to himself, the chainsaw operator brought along three fellows to watch him work - as is the custom in Africa! With Jannie also in attendance, we soon had quite a crowd involved!

Unfortunately - no -one thought to check with the hotel if it would be ok to have a chainsaw going mad just outside the lounge...........and as it turned out, it actually wasn't a good plan. We were hosting a meeting for the Faculty of Humanities from Africa University, and they came to me in desperation and told me that they were not able to hear themselves think! We stopped the cutting at once, and made a plan for the woodsman and his retinue to return the following day, and the conference continued in peace.

To make up for the inconvenience, we gave everybody a double large helping of chocolate pudding with ice-cream - and everyone, particularly the ladies, seemed happy with the arrangement!

The ladies are sooooo easy to bribe, aren't they?