Trade Me pickups stretch sisterhood

The Trade Me Sisters ride again. You may be wondering what a potty, a wine rack, a tractor and a car have in common. They are all items which have frayed my gentle temper.

My two friends, Yvee and Ruby, are sisters who share more than DNA. They also share a passion for buying things off Trade Me and making me pick up their stupid purchases.

I shouldn’t be so crotchety because I know the Trade Me Sisters have and will always give me the very shirts off their backs. They are loyal friends and treat me like a sister – which is to say, I get really cranky at them and they don’t listen.

It stared with a chamber pot. Yvee, who is a damn hippy at heart, bought a crib somewhere south of Invercargill.

A little place they liked to call ‘‘my room’’ was the renovated coal shed out the back. To save me seeking out the composting toilet in the night, they decided to equip ‘‘my room’’ with its own personal loo.

The phone call came through: ‘‘Can you pick up a piece of pottery I bought off Trade Me please? It’ll just be carry-on luggage.’’

A week later, I was going through customs and having my potty X-rayed.

The officers were ever so polite. They didn’t say a word but I asked if they’d caught sight of the item. They had. I should have looked disgusted and said it was a salad bowl with a handle.

A month or two later, Yvee sent me to a suburb on the outskirts of Christchurch to pick up (and pay for) an ugly wine rack. The pickup point was a freak’s house with a poster of a pastel-coloured wizard with a hole in the wizard’s genital region.

Also, and time may have enhanced this memory, I think the carpet was so covered in pet hair it had worn a kind of trail in the hallway. And I really hate pet hair. It was probably the tractor that sent me off the deep end. Ruby, who lives in Oamaru, won an auction for a toy tractor from somewhere in Redwood.

Bear in mind I ammostly homeless so my car boot usually houses a suitcase and home appliance or two. This toy tractor was probably closer to real-life size with a scoopy bucket at the front and a trailer on the back.

I could barely fit it in my car. So I took a deep breath, called Ruby and exhaled, using a lot of cuss-words to describe my feelings. The end result was sticking the tractor in my garage until someone happened to be driving through Christchurch en route to Oamaru. I think it took three months. If I never see that tractor again it will be too soon.

By now, the sisters were more than aware of my ill-feeling towards picking up pieces of rubbish for them. However, this week, Yvee forgot and a text beeped its way into my inbox.

‘‘Send me your bank details, I need you to pick up a car we bought off Trade Me.’’

Poke me in the eyehole with a carburettor, there it was again. The auction site that dare not speak its name.

So, I put together a noun, some adjectives and a bit of invective for my reply. She sent me another. ‘‘Also you will have to take it to a mechanic to get the cam belt fixed. You will love me again one day.’’

I expect Iwill. As soon as her car blows up on the side of the road, I expect Iwill.

I amgetting pretty happy just thinking about it now.