I don't like Good Friday and I never have. My parents weren't churchgoers at all, but they were very conventional and of the opinion that nothing whatsoever should happen on Good Friday. You couldn't go and watch a film or have a sleepover or do anything that produced more than minimal enjoyment. I lived through the day with the great weight of Christ's death hanging over me, dealing with my guilt by being as gloomy as possible. I have never reconciled myself to Easter.
By far the funniest Good Friday I have ever had was three years ago. John was working in the UK, both our cottages were very busy with people coming and going and we had just had a very, very wet rainy season. I had made a great error in taking in a private booking and not blocking off the dates on booking.com with the result that I was double booked. The second person to book was a Chinese man, travelling through Africa. On the Thursday, I wrote to him and apologised that I would have to cancel his booking. However, he was not easily put off.
'I am coming,' he wrote.
'But we don't have anywhere for you to sleep.'
'I am coming anyway. Please, I have nowhere else to stay. Everything is booked.'
'I am sorry,' I wrote back, 'but we have someone staying in that cottage on Friday night. Are you able to come on Saturday?'
'Do you have sofa or tent for me to camp in? Please, I am coming.'
Eventually, I gave in. Sian said he could sleep in her room and she would sleep with Ellie. The man was arriving on the bus from Harare and would not be in Bulawayo until around 5pm so I gave him my phone number and asked him to ring me when the bus arrived. We were going to be at my parents' house for lunch so I would leave when I knew he was in Bulawayo.
The day had not started very well as Rolo had killed Ellie's rabbit, totally by mistake, I believe, and I had had to bury it in the back garden. I made lunch and took it to my parents' house and we had only just finished when I got a phone call from the man to say he had arrived. We then had to dash back home to let him in, only to find that he was already here. We normally lock the gate, but it must have been left unlocked as we discovered him standing in the garage (it is not concrete, it just has 'wire walls'), looking out - and Rolo waiting outside, licking his lips. He said the taxi driver had dropped him off and he was a little 'unsure' of Rolo, he decided to close himself in the garage.
We showed him the room he would be staying in and he asked if he could put some food in the fridge. I saw him put in an enormous Russian sausage along with a few other things. The next thing was that he emerged from his room, looking very perturbed and said that Rolo had taken his 'foffage', which I took to mean his sausage. I was so angry with Rolo, but at the same time, I couldn't understand how he had managed to open the fridge. I ran outside to look for Rolo and found him slinging the man's sock - his foffage - in the air and then attempting to rip it up.
The next thing that happened was while I was talking to him. He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and I saw Rolo walk past in the background with the man's shoe. Luckily, Sian and Ellie had also seen him and managed to rescue the shoe and put it back in the bedroom without him noticing. That wasn't all. In the middle of the night, Sian's poster above her bed fell on his head and he thought he was being attacked by robbers.
As soon as he moved into the cottage, his life became much more uneventful. He went out to Matopos and the museum and seemed to have a very good time. He spent hours walking around the garden and taking photos of Rolo to send his wife back home.
'I see ones like this in Serengeti,' he said to me once and I still don't know if he was joking or not. He told us about the tiny flat he lived in in China and how he and his wife were hoping to move to Australia where his daughter was. He was such a nice man; really relaxed and someone who seemed to enjoy everything and everyone - even Rolo. He gave us a review of 10/10.
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