Intrigue

Monday dawned another beautiful day with, in theory, time for a rest. Of course, it didn't turn out like that, as no sooner had we settled on going to look over some other land than Alin's phone was ringing with requirements for our presence.
The most intriguing was from Toader.
Toader's mother owns a piece of land right in the middle of parcels we already own. Unfortunately she has been taken ill, and Toader now has a power of attorney.
So far so good.
Also unfortunately, Toader's son is a bit of a tearaway. He got riotously drunk about a month ago and went into the woods to cut firewood. Technically this is illegal, but, of course, it is where everybody's firewood comes from.
Even more unfortunately, Toader's son saw a rather good looking tree that didn't have any branches on it and chopped it down.
Only it was carrying the main electricity cable between Mosna and Nemsa, and Nemsa was without power for 24 hours.
Even worse, the son had tried to chop away all the pesky wires attached to the felled tree which resulted in him blowing up the chain saw and knocking himself out to such an extent that when Erne the policeman arrived Toader's son was still groggy.
In theory there is bail in Romania, but it's not for the likes of young tearaways, so the son has been in Medias jail since then.
Now there are a whole range of crimes with which he could be charged, but in view of the fact everyone regarded the whole episode as really funny ( so drunk he didn't know it wasn't a tree!) the charge brought was damage to Electricity Company property - which is civil rather than criminal.
Except it costs money to pay the fine/reimburse the Company.
So Toader wanted money to help with this.
We were very loathe to help, because, even though we wanted the land, we felt the mother should at least be consulted. Toader was going to take her money for his own use rather than hers.
We told him so.
Which is when he put an intriguing proposition to us.
If we would buy the land, he would do all our ploughing ( or plugging as Alin refers to it) and planting for the same money as his mother was due from the land, and we could pay it direct to her - or at least to the chemist shop supplying her drugs..
Which seemed fair enough.
So Toader's son got out of jail ( his father promptly got him to start plugging)
Toader's mother got a complete supply of the drugs she needed.
And we got a parcel of land we wanted.
Even the Mayor of Clochemerle would have been pleased.