My parents’ home in Musina has always had a thatched roof. Many years ago they used to have two palms in the back garden. They had been there for decades and had reached stratospheric height and massive girth. My father stood looking at them one day and said “One of these days one or both of those trees is going to come crashing down on the roof. We’d better do something about them.” My mother volunteered to call on MTD – the Messina Transvaal Development Corporation’s Messina mine.

I have an old black and white photograph of Mum aged 17 standing in one of the many rows of her official high school picture. In a school full of demurely fronted pupils she stands out somewhat, her full breasts straining against her uniform blouse, the buttons holding it closed more in optimism than certainty. In adulthood Mum resembled Claudia Cardinale, and well into her sixties she still had an hourglass figure. But her best asset was her warm, kind personality and irrepressible sense of humour. Everyone loved Mum.

So anyway, off she tootled to MTD to see what she could secure in the way of palm tree help. Naturally she returned with a thumbs up. In due course the Mine Manager arrived, followed by a pick up truck loaded with a team of workers, and one of the largest cranes I have ever seen. It was a beautiful, shiny, bright yellow with wheels standing taller than I. It stopped on the white line outside the house and, to my delight, four stabilising outriggers smoothly rumbled out of the sides and took up almost the entire road – and theirs is one of those wagon and full span of oxen roads. The latticed boom purred up and over the roof, the upper sheave tipped towards the palm. The mine manager instructed and supervised and the team set to work. Chains were fitted, chainsaws sprang into life, and in a remarkably short space of time the first tree was delicately tipped to the horizontal and then gently lifted over the roof. Neat and sweet. The manager sent for a large truck and one tree, then the second, were loaded and borne away. Dad wisely stayed in the background while Mum beamed and twinkled and faintly wriggled for the Mine Manager who probably wished we had ten palms.

Fast forward some 35 years and the next door neighbour found himself in the identical predicament. I don’t know where he went – MTD’s Musina mine is long closed – but one morning we heard an awful racket outside and went to investigate. A considerably smaller version of the mine’s yellow crane, filthy and beaten up, was clattering towards us. It was festooned with workers clinging to its frame and chattering excitedly. Shortly afterwards a pick up truck arrived with the supervisor who immediately set to work on his cell phone, and didn’t emerge from his vehicle until the process was complete. While four small outriggers were deployed one worker scampered up to the top of the sheave which was then croaked and coughed over the neighbours’ roof. He swung a chain round the middle of the tree, then retreated to its top to watch his colleagues as they picked and dug around the base and then laboriously hacked through the roots of the tree. Eventually, and after a lot of noise, it was free, and a second chain was flung round the base. With much shouting and gesticulating the crane driver manoeuvred the palm to the horizontal where it pitched, yawed and swung wildly, to our neighbours’ visible horror, with the lazy worker clinging to the fronds at the end. And then it was time to lift the tree over the roof and, while it wasn’t elegant, it was mishap free. Soon the palm was out above the road and hanging from the crane, still high off the ground. One of the workers leapt forward, scrambled up, and opened the shackle that held the chain at the base of the tree. Why? Who knows?

The base of the heavy tree, complete with soil clogged roots, slammed with a ground-trembling thump into the road, and like a medieval catapult, the frond end flicked briskly upwards and shot the lazy worker into the sky. With a long, long drawn out wail he rose, and rose, and then descended, and finally thudded into the tarmac at the intersection at the end of the block.

We don’t have Ster Kinekor, but Musina’s capacity to entertain is underrated.