Joust a minute, the gazebo's all wrong.

 

I'm in a foul mood.  No really, you've picked a bad time.  I've just had to put up the damned gazebo.

In a previous scribble on here, I pointed out how men tend not to follow instructions - or recipes. And yes, that includes me.  So I did the proper thing, I sourced the gazebo instruction putting-up sheets. It's because a few chums are decending tomorrow for a BBQ.  A peek at the weather forecast suggests we might miss the rain by about a quarter of an inch on the tele map.  But we are taking no chances, I was told.  So a spot of shelter is required in case of a short, sharp burst.

Now, we have two of these gazebo things; smallish and absolutely huge.  The huge one was bought prior to a larger family gathering one August; the cost of hiring one for a day was eye-wateringly staggering and buying one the same size in a B&Q sale to keep for ever and ever was cheaper.  I'd use it more but it's the size of Belgium and needs a minimum of six people to put it up. So out came the small one today and I proudly waved the instructions in a 'This'll be up in a jiffy, don't you worry' kind of way to my wife, wrestling with bunting.

Before I go any further, how did we get into this gazebo thing?  I mean when did gazebos become essential items? When the tent morph into the gazebo?  It's just a roof.  Well the one in our garden at the moment is. When did I sit in the garden and think to myself, 'This whole sitting out here experience would be dramatically improved if only I had a fabric roof over part of the garden.  Get a tent out darling and bring the scissors, while you're at it.'

I don't remember that.

Anyway I got all the bits out of the box, fabric, poles and a bag of plastic feet, pegs and joining bits.
I laid out all the poles, grouped as per size and with the makings of a smile on my face, turned to page one.  So I need eight of pole E, two of pole C,  six of A, so on and so forth.  A quick check of  the poles confirmed they had identifying stickers on them.  Some had the nueber 3, some 5 others 6. Eh?

Check instructions.  I need eight of pole E, two of pole C,  six of...but the poles have got 3, 5, 6...

We'll move on...this went on for well over 20 minutes, I went back and forth to the garage to double check I'd got the right gazebo poles amongst the significant quantity of poles at my disposal.

Then the feared moment arrived.  Bunting in place, my wife distracted by my increasingly choice language grabs the instructions. She had in cracked in under 15 seconds.

'Well if you'd turned the page, you'd know.  Look!  You need eight of pole E which is 2, two of pole C which is 3, six of A which is 6.  It's obvious.'

'What..?'

'Look! Here!  The drawing...the letters are actually numbers...!'

If you're confused reading this then you have just a tiny indication of how I was feeling at the time - and yet it made perfect sense to my wife. Venus and Mars?

So anyway, we got the thing put up mid garden, only for her to decide that it really should be right in front of the patio doors.  So we crab-like walked this ridiculously flimsy, wobbly metal frame to the doors and secured it via the ropes into the garden.  It stood there, stripey and flouncy looking like a sad offcut from a jousting tournament. I double checked the instructions, so determined was I to get something positive out the farce of the one time I tried to do it properly.  My eye was drawn to the final words.

'Should not be used as a permanent dwelling.' Dear Lord, it's a tent with a mohawk. And they seriously chastise me for thnking of moving in.  I give up.  Still, at least the damn things finished.

'I'll put the kettle on, ' she said.

We both looked at the gazebo.  Pause...still looking.

'I can't get in. The gazebo roof is lower than the doors.  They won't open...perhaps we should move it back to.....'

I've had better Saturdays to be fair.

PS  Sunday June 3.  The weather map on the tele was wrong. It rained. We didn't get to use the gazebo.