A week or so before Christmas we went out and bought a whole load of shopping, including a large frozen turkey – so large in fact that it would not fit in a store carrier bag (this is significant and you will see why later). It was a horrible evening, cold, dark and wet and we were late setting out so even later getting back. Just to add insult to injury, when we got back to the house, someone had nicked the space outside the front door and so we had to park on the other side of the street. As usual, hubby sent me inside as I am not much cop at carrying bags of groceries whilst managing my two sticks. Sooner or later I am going to investigate a head basket like all those pictures of African women, but maybe not just yet….
Anyway, hubby starts ferrying in the bags. He is carrying too much all at once because he wants to get out of the cold and wet and decides to make his last trip a real lazy man’s load. He takes several bags out of the boot of the car and holds them in his left hand and is then left with just the turkey which he lifts out with his right. He then (not having a spare hand to shut the boot with) decides to rest the turkey on the car bumper leaning against his knee, so that he has a free hand to shut the boot. So far, so good, but, in the way of Murphy’s Law everywhere, the turkey (being roughly rugby ball shaped) starts to roll to one side and is dislodged by the force of the boot coming down. It hits the ground and (again, being ball shaped) rolls under the car. At this point I should mention that we live on a (steep) hill and the car was facing downhill. Hubby abandoned the turkey (briefly) and got the rest of the bags into the house. Once back out at the car (in the wind and the cold and the rain) he finds that he cannot reach the turkey from the back of the car so has the brilliant idea of driving the car down the hill and then picking up (now exposed) turkey. Of course, the turkey (being ball shaped as I have said) just rolls down the hill after him and stays well hidden under the car. “Aha” thinks hubby, I shall reverse up the hill and the turkey will appear at the front of the car (at this point I have visions of cheese rolling competitions and fear that the turkey will roll down the hill to the next car along, but I say nothing) – so he does just that. Sadly, somewhere under the car is a protrusion and the turkey gets caught under the chassis and is dragged up the hill with the car. I have to say that at this point, poor hubby is getting increasingly upset whilst I am starting to find the whole situation hysterical. I do however try to stay serious for the sake of my marriage….
So, what did we do in the end? Well, hubby discovered that although the wife’s not much good at carrying the shopping due to the walking sticks, the sticks themselves make ideal turkey grabbers. He reached under the car and fished out the offending beastie – handing it to me for examination. Well, what can I say, we were lucky – it turns out that the particular turkey we had bought had a double plastic layer over it and although the outer one was shredded, the inner one was just about intact. In fact, whilst frozen there looked to be no damage to the bird itself although once defrosted, it did have a bit of a skinned knee…..well, wouldn’t be right for any bird of mine not to have a battle scar or two, would it?
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