Menaced by a turkey

Or, The Tale of Two Gateposts.

Younger Son's dog has a habit of chasing deer. This makes him/them unpopular with the locals so Lobo has to spend his days tied up. An area around the house has been fenced in but another area needs to be gated. Has needed to be gated since last summer.

Gates have been acquired; all that remains is for them to be installed. And therein lies the tale.

It was to be Husband's job this holiday. ( Don't feel sorry for him. He prefers manual labour to keeping children amused.) But . . . the gateposts Younger Son bought do not come up to Husband's standards.

 "They're too thin," he insists. " They're only 9 cm when they should be 12 at least, preferably 15. "

 "The people in the shop said they were fine," says Younger Son.

 " Pah," says Husband. Or words to that effect.

It turns out that nobody in Italy sells 15cm gateposts. And believe me we've tried. For the last 9 days Nuora has patiently been calling all the wood merchants Husband can google to no avail. In spite of the fact that there are two tree chopping places literally down the road.

Today with a sorrowful droop to his shoulders Husband accepted the inevitable: he would have to work with what he had. So he needed concrete. "That can't be hard to find," I said. " Even in Italy. "

Husband gave me an 'oh yeah?' sort of look.

We spent the next two hours driving around. To be fair the second place we tried had concrete but they then gave us an address for a place that might have gateposts.

It might have been poor communication - remember we don't speak Italian and Husband relies on the translator on his phone - but we ended up in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately a very pretty nowhere surrounded by snow-capped mountains but still.

But what about the turkey I hear you ask.

 To get from the house to the main road we have to follow a dirt track and there in the middle was an enormous turkey. He obviously had no intention of  moving so I hopped out to take a photo - and very quickly hopped back in when I saw the malevolent look in his eyes.

Husband eased the car forward. "Can you see him? Is he in the way?"

"No, yes, no, STOP!"

Tempting though the thought of roast turkey was I knew he belonged to one of the neighbours, possibly the same one who complained about Lobo, so we had to be patient and wait until we could edge past and then make a run for it.

 "He's chasing us!"