Never actually heard of a ‘Forest Party’ before I went. I thought Clifford had just made it up, but then, even that was weird because Clifford isn’t really the imaginative type. Or he doesn’t throw it around like that. He’s always got some business venture going, always trying to get something for nothing. Sometimes it even works!
But then, this was a long shot even for him. Apparently it was his birthday, so we all had to come to his newly-purchased land and bring a plate to share, and a chainsaw or lopping equivalent. I know, I know…bringing a plate to share is a bit tacky when you’re throwing a party, but I was suspicious about the lopping thing, personally. We’d all heard by now that Clifford had finally been swindled himself into buying a plot of land that was mostly woods. All the honest tree removal contractors in Melbourne, and he just passes all of them by because it’s ‘too much’. Well, that’s just his payment for years of trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes: he finally got some of his own medicine.
So THAT happened. I thought he’d end up paying for some actual tree cutters and put it out of my mind. And then I thought he was throwing a forest party because it was the only way to make use of all the woodlands. Then the party games turned into stuff like ‘who can lop that tree the fastest’ and ‘can you chop down that tree with a blindfold?’ and the much more efficient ‘who can lop that tree the fastest, but everyone’s working in teams’.
Yeah, so the whole thing was just Clifford making us do all the tree lopping for him. Again…very highly rated companies in Melbourne that do tree cutting, and here’s us taking away their work like a bunch of drongos. And once the deforestation was complete, it was time to go home.
Though John DID make his signature pavlova, so we did get something out of it.
-Marko