Snippets 5

Doctor Davis decided to travel to Sweden with his wife for their annual holiday and after deliberation planned to travel by car and if everything went well to try to get as far as Lapland. He had a B M W, which was practically new, having only 8000 miles on the clock and this would be it’s first long trip. As they lived in Colchester the logical thing to do was to travel by boat from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark and to make their way by road to Kobenhavn and from there to Sweden. It was a pleasant easy trip and they spent a few days exploring the coastal road to Stockholm, where they found a wonderful hotel with great food. Everything went so well that they decided to carry on to Lapland, a journey which took them four days before they found themselves in a small town called Gallivare, where the hotel left a lot to be desired and where there was snow on the ground and a forecast of bad weather to come. They made the decision to start the return journey in the morning and had the best meal that was available that evening after consuming rather more alcohol than they were used to. In the course of the evening they got in conversation with a local gentleman who told them the thing to do in Lapland was to buy a Polar bear skin which would be very valuable in England when they returned, and he promised to show them one in the morning. Right enough next morning they were shown two beautiful white skins and Dr Davis and his wife spent half an hour trying to make up their minds which one to have. With the decision made, it was obvious that they were going to need a roof rack, as the car boot wouldn’t be able to take it, so Dr Davis and his wife went off to arrange this while the vendor got help to pack the large skin in water proof packaging. By the time this was done and everything paid for it was too late to start the journey that day, which meant another night’s stay and special housing for the Polar bear skin and that in turn meant three men to carry it. Next morning bright and early the skin was lifted onto the car- rack with the help of four men, as it was so heavy, all of who had to be paid, and they started the return journey. Each evening and morning the skin had to be lifted down and up again and each time with the assistance of four helpers and of course it had to be housed in a safe place, again at great cost. It rained the evening before they reached Stockholm which made things more difficult, and on the approach to the city they had to make a sudden stop at traffic lights and on doing so the skin slipped forward over the windscreen obscuring the view. It was necessary however to pull over to the side away from the traffic, easier said than done in the middle of traffic lights, as was proven a few minutes later when they were hit from the side by a car coming the other way. This in turn caused a pile up of five cars, all of which sustained considerable damage. The police were called and the usual exchange of details and statements to the police had to be made, all of which took a lot of time. Dr Davis had to get his car towed to a repair garage and had to stay in the city for four days while the repairs were being carried out. The Polar bear skin really presented problems during this, having to be taken down and transported to a warehouse for storage until the car was ready and then packed onto the roof-rack for the journey to the port. At last they arrived at the harbour for embarkation only to find that the load was too high and that the skin would have to come down and be housed elsewhere, of course at extra cost for both storage and labour of lifting etc. The journey home from the port in Harwich was easy, but on arrival they had to get four men to lift the skin from the car to the garage. Next morning Dr Davis phoned Harrods to ask if they would take the skin to have it cured properly and they agreed to take it the following Monday. At this stage they sat back to count the cost of trip and the extra cost as a result of the bear- skin, however they both agreed that in the end it would be worth it. Can you imagine the shock they had two days after Harrods took the skin when they got a phone call from them to say that their expert had examined the skin and that it was not a Polar bear skin at all, that it was in fact a Moose skin which was valueless.