Report 15: Day 14

Alcohol units: 140 (went easy last night)

Showers: 5

Cat: 1(not home but roaming)

Dog: 1

Wife: 1

Kids alive: 4

Potatoes: 5kg

In-laws: 3

Easter Eggs: 20

My f*k Marelize.

Dear Diary actually I do not know where to even start.

In one sense we are living in strange times, so unpredictable events should actually be fairly predictable; in another sense, just some bloody normality would also do quite nicely right now.

The latest antics all started with my hastily installed scarecrow and Mrs. B’s obsessive surveilling of the neighborhood. Her current peeping-tom nature was ostensibly to track Raymond her cat, but at the same time there is a little dash of obsessive nosy neighbor thrown in; it’s a combination of these two that kicked off the circus that was last night.

At 2am the doorbell rang; not in a polite “there is somebody at the door” kind of way, but rather a regular and obsessive pushing of the button until the whole house was up and blurry-eyed, wondering what the hell was happening.

I stumbled through and answered the intercom to a Sergeant Du Plessis, the owner of the finger that was punishing my doorbell. The Sergeant explained to me there was a situation in our back garden, and they needed immediate access to the rear of the house; everyone inside should go upstairs until said situation was dealt with.

I let the man through along with 4 others in his posse, opened the backdoor and hustled a very sleepy Poppie upstairs to one of the kid’s bedrooms, while my wife and I proceeded to watch the show from our bedroom. To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all.

They headed straight towards the shed shouting – they had been training and waiting for this moment all their lives it would seem – at this point dear Diary, I thought the jig was up; the day before our Police minister, Bheki Cele, had announced a nationwide crackdown on illegal alcohol production and last night’s news was full of prohibition-style crack downs all across the country; police raiding residences, large barrels of fermenting beer and other assortments and concoctions of homemade cocktails, being emptied into the streets, with the homeowners handcuffed and led away to the awaiting cop cars.

My time had come; my fermenting stash of “EverREDi” was about to be emptied onto the streets of Pinelands for all to see...the impending shame, dear Diary! The Pinelands Facebook group would just lap this up; every opinionated ‘Karen’ would be adding her 2 cents worth from her precariously balanced suburban ivory tower.

Oddly though the shed was not their intended destination, I let out a sigh of relief; oddly so did my wife.

Guns now drawn, they surged past my distillery and into the darkness behind it; shouts of “get down” and “armed police” could be heard and then three quick shots fired off! After that silence…for what felt like an age.

Eventually, the five policemen emerged back into the light trailing behind them with what appeared to be my winter coat entangled in two broom sticks and skiing goggles. I could feel my wife’s eyes bore into me. I stoically looked ahead.

Even then, just as I thought life could not get more complicated, life laughed and said, “hold my beer”.

As I ran downstairs to find out what on earth was actually happening, I bumped straight into my sister-in-law and my niece in our kitchen, my niece understandably quite shaken up from the loud bangs.

Given that there are only six people staying in the house and none of them being my sister-in-law and her daughter, you may be wondering, as I was, dear Diary, what the hell my upset niece and my sister-in-law, both in matching pink onesies, were doing in our kitchen?

Before I got to ask this question Sergeant Du Plessis, holding a bright neon pink towel with crumbling oats and potato mash oozing through 2 bullet holes, was standing at the back door with some questions of his own.

Okay. Let’s deal with the police and the dead scarecrow first. Mrs. B (confirmed by Sergeant DP) had been on the lookout for Raymond and had seen some lights going on and off in our back garden, the granny flat she thought? She then made it her mission to see what was going on at 1:30am and focused her unwanted gaze on my back yard. Being a windy night her eyes eventually fell on movement at the back of the shed, my overdressed scarecrow, who to Mrs. B took to be a burglar waiting to pounce on something in the garden.

Being the dutiful (nosy-parker) citizen she is, immediately hit her speed dial and the number of Pinelands Police station. After 10 minutes on the phone with the dispatcher (no doubt catching up since her last incarceration?) the police were sent out to deal with the imminent home invasion.

Sergeant Du Plessis tells me it was pretty dark back there and difficult to see; my scarecrow was vocally unresponsive (no surprise really) and a sudden gust of wind had whipped up the jacket’s arms; in retaliation to the waving scarecrow they shot and “neutralized the threat”.

He was very apologetic for the disturbance and more than a little annoyed that since shots were fired, a report would now have to be drawn up, which was going to be hard to explain to the station commander.

He asked me why we would have a scarecrow so far back and hidden in the garden, to which I replied that it was probably just the kids messing around and I will “have a chat with them later.” He nodded and made some notes.

As the posse left and headed back to their blue lights he turned and offered some gardening advice; “I think your plants might enjoy a bit more sunlight, if you want them to get a bit bigger…” he winked.

I’ll let Joseph know that on the advice of the local law enforcement, he may need to replant the “Pot plants” in a sunnier clime when he comes back.

To be honest dear Diary, I am exhausted again. I will enter into the record of the house, how I have now gained two more strays tomorrow.

RH