We fired up the truck this morning, and went to get the Christmas tree. We even remembered to measure the height of the ceiling in the place where we want to put the tree, and take the tape measure with us so that we could measure the trees, which was extremely organised for us, since we have in the past been out to buy curtains without first having measured the window. In the days when we both used to work in offices, and used to get given the sort of psychometric tests beloved by firms running executive training sessions, and which cause our friends who are professional academic psychologists to raise their eyebrows in a sceptical manner, we both scored rather lowly on what was termed the Completer-Finisher dimension. The executive trainers described Completer Finishers as being the people who dot the i-s and cross the t-s. And measure Christmas trees, and windows.
Other than my lack in the i dotting and t crossing department, I always had a remarkably balanced personality. My highest score was for openness to new experiences, and I was moderately creative, although worryingly for my last City employers my creativity score fell during the period that I was working for them. The Systems Administrator was pretty balanced as well, which is probably why we jog along so happily.
The heater in the truck has not worked since we've had it, having packed up at some point in the quarter of a million miles it covered before the Systems Administrator bought it umpteenth hand. This is not a problem as long as you only drive it in the sort of weather where you are not going to need to defrost the windscreen during the journey, and as long as you wrap up warm. It needed some welding done at its last MoT, as it has at every previous one, but apart from that is going fine, and the mechanic at the local garage told the SA that it was a much better bet than more recent models, since while the chassis is gradually being replaced weld by weld, the transmission and engine are good for another 250,000 miles. The garage does of course have a vested interest in the truck coming in for an annual spot of welding. The SA is a keen student of twentieth century history, including both World Wars and the Russian Revolution, so can imagine we are taking part in some campaign as we rattle across the countryside in our incredibly noisy vehicle, with its lack of heating and heavy, somewhat imprecise gear shift. I enjoy sitting at height and being able to see over the hedges. Today I saw two flocks of lapwings, one beside the A120 and another on the marshes by the river Stour.
We found a nice bushy tree without any bald patches, that would just fit in the space if we took the bottom 20 centimetres off the trunk, and which had its main branches starting more than 20 centimetres from the base so we wouldn't have to sacrifice half the tree. I expected that by the time I got to the till to pay for the tree a scruffy neer-do-wells alert would have reached the staff via the bush telegraph. My colleague in the shop was aware of the truck, but assumed it belonged to the local who normally cuts holly boughs for Christmas in the arboretum.
The tree is now safely tucked away out of the wind in the garage, carefully balanced on top of the lawn tractor, since the garage is rather full. It is too early to put it up. There was one year that we left the tree lying down in a shed which the cats liked to go and lie in, when they wanted to get out of the house and take a breather from the presence of the other cats, and when we came to put the tree up the smell of pine resin could not totally mask the fact that the cats must have taken offence at having a strange tree dumped in their shed, and had scent marked it.
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