a screw (or two) loose

A really busy day yesterday; surgery appointment, dentist appointment (both), rehearsal for upcoming gig - but first thing in the morning - erecting a marque.

Friend Sam is hosting her annual summer party in her garden today (saturday).  She needs a marquee.  Friend Sally has a marquee and offers to loan it to Sam.  So yesterday morning, Anniemay and I drive to Sally’s house to help her load the marquee (and all the paraphernalia associated with marquees and garden parties) into two cars.

Sam and her husband are at work.  Sally’s husband is also at work.  Luckily it’s teachers’ training day, so Sally recruits two 15 year old boys to help.

We let ourselves into Sam’s garden and her lawn is soon covered in long boxes, labeled A, B and C.  We confuse these at our peril.  

We assemble the top by first laying out a long line of metal tubes (A) and bolting them together.  This is the roof line.  We then attach another set of tubes (B) at right angles to the roof line.  Again with bolts.   Then we lay the canvas roof over the whole thing.

Next we tilt one side up and attach a further set of tubes (C) to form the sides.  We do one side at a time.  

Sally is brilliant - she orchestrates the whole performance - a bit like circus boss Brad Braden (Charlton Heston) in The Greatest Show on Earth.  At one point she even sucks in her teeth and mutters “I don’t like the look of that wind”.  She tells us to make sure we use enough bolts to secure the roof ; “I’ve seen it lift off the ground with four men holding it down”.

Eventually two women, two schoolboys and a man with a dodgy heart and lung have, in just under an hour,  erected a marque.

I go to buy a paper this morning; I put my hand in my pocket to pull out some change but find these instead.  Anniemay turns to me with the look of a seasoned assembler of DIY furniture and says; “oh no - screws in the box.”.  Me; “?”.  Her; “it’s always a worry when you’ve got screws left in the box”.  And goes off to check the weather forecast.