Those of you who know me, please be seated immediately, otherwise you may fall over with shock.
Ready?
I am now the owner of a .22 calibre rifle! And believe me, I find that as surprising as you do. Let’s back up a bit and I’ll try to explain.
A few weeks ago the Forbearing Husband arrived home with a large parcel. He unwrapped it.
And there it was…
The Forbearing Husband has quite a penchant for sporting arms, and I am well used to various bits of weaponry turning up in the mail. What was different this time was him presenting me with the hardware (after he’d checked the chamber was empty of course) saying, ‘Here you go, the rifle you wanted’.
Wait! Wanted a rifle? Me? Me! Lifelong pacifist and person who exclaims over cute baby chicks and bunnies? What extraordinary thing had I said or done to prompt the Forbearing Husband to think I wanted a gun? And, if I had said such a thing, how had I forgotten this?
I found a bright light, tied FH to a chair, and began interrogating him. It’s okay, he quite liked it. I think it fitted into his ‘captured behind enemy lines by strong female lead, but I will never talk’ movie fantasies. I declined to wear camo though. And talk he did.
No persons, animals or ropes were harmed in this staging.
It was revealed that I had somehow expressed gun owning ambitions to Bruce-Down-the-Road. I should explain, although presumably it is fairly self evident, that Bruce-Down-the-Road is a man named Bruce who lives down the road from our old house in West Auckland. He’s a 82+ year old ex-farmer and man of adventure. Bruce spent his younger years snow skiing, water skiing, skin diving, snorkeling, spear fishing, and hunting. In between times he burnt off bush, sprayed gorse, and built fences — as well as a couple of houses. Bruce-Down-the-Road and I connected over horses. He was an ace horseman in his twenties and once rode all the way from Auckland to Taupo on his steed (whose name I forget, but let’s call him Zorro). It took three weeks he told me, as I leant on his fence after pausing to say hello while I walked the dogs, and before he left Auckland he thought it wise to learn how to shoe a horse.
Bruce-Down-the-Road is laid up now with asbestosis from working a factory job back in his teens, but he maintains an adventurous spirit, and still shoots pigeons from his front porch (shhh, don’t tell council). He has a ton of useful knowledge, endless fascinating stories and a cat called Pat — who is named after his previous cat, she was also Pat.
While I was back and forth last summer getting the old house ready to sell Bruce and I had a routine. I would go over to his place on a Wednesday night and cook us both dinner. He would bring out strawberries and cream for dessert. Then we’d sit, companionably drinking tea as he entertained me with his reminiscences. Many of them involve his adventures while hunting, and this I suspect is how I came to ‘say’ I wanted a .22 rifle. I imagine the convo went something like this:
Bruce-Down-the-Road: ‘…and then just as the wild boar aimed his tusk and charged I popped that bastard with my [something, something] .22. Ah yes, sweet little gun that one was, never missed a shot. That’s the gun you will be wanting when you move to the farm’.*
Chrissy B [wanting to be enthusiastic, but listening mainly to the none gun bits]: ‘A .22 you say? Sounds just the thing’. ‘Now tell me, how do you cook a wild boar? I hear it can be very nice done in a slow cooker with cider and bacon, but what’s your favorite recipe?’.
There we were, on different but enjoyably parallel tracks. And that my dears, is likely how I came to accidentally express interest in owning a Norinco EM332 .22LR. I’m guessing the next time the Forbearing Husband dropped in on Bruce-Down-the-Road they got to talking about guns (as they generally do), and Bruce communicated my unbridled enthusiasm.
I actually got 9/10 shots on the target.
Since the Forbearing Husband had spent all that money under false pretenses I felt I should show some willing. We went down to the Seven Acre Wood for a bit of a plink. Forbearing Husband set up some targets, and this was my effort. Like Bruce said, a sweet little gun, never misses. See, even I got almost all of the bullets to hit the target.
Anyway, you’ll never guess… I quite enjoyed target shooting! Thanks Bruce-Down-the-Road for the unexpected weaponry. I think I’ll call my rifle ‘Pat’.
* Any technical improbabilities in this re-telling of Bruce-Down-the-Road’s story are entirely of my own devising (I mean, can you even kill a wild boar with a .22?).
