Manly Pursuits

There's a reservoir in front of my house. My maternal grandfather moved his family from Wicklow to Killeshin when he was made care-taker of the facility that once supplied Carlow town, despite being under the jurisdiction of Laois CoCo. It has a big track running around it, with several bridges and weirs that feed the lake from the rivers that drain the surrounding farmland. I run around that track every day. Or I did, until a mothafuckin tree fell on the trail.

You see, the principal river runs from the field, but splits into three at the weir at the trail's deepest point. One rivulet is scarcely but a dribble, but it has cut a furrow for itself. This furrow created two banks, one of which was little more than a foot wide, accounting for its proximity to the trail. The tree was isolated on this bank, and eventually soil erosion saw it give up its grounding and collapse, right across the track, still rooted to the soil on one side, resting on the wooden railing on the other. So big was this tree that it then broke the first beam on the fence, before coming to a rest immovably on the post. But Laois CoCo haven't been in Killeshin in any capacity since Joe Delany spilled coffee on their one map back in 1999. So I said to my self, scratch that sound.

Thusly I did yea-verily collect my axe and woolly-gloves. The axe had seen better days, which is remarkable for the fact that I didn't even know we had one nevermind seen it used. I took the file from a nearby cake and sharpened the blade. This caused a mini-fire, when a spark caught on a stack of old Sunday Times News Reviews. I didn't have time to put it out, there was a-chopping to cut down.

So I went and I swung and I gouged and I scared a dog and I hacked and I swore and I huffed and I chopped and I micturated and I resumed until that bitch was down. It took about an hour and a half. I couldn't see because I was sweating so much my glasses fogged up. When I looked at the sky I could see the steam coming off my head. A number of welts had formed and burst on my left hand. When I cut through the tree, it still clung on, resting on the fence. So I dun knocked down the fence too. But it rolled itself onto the next post of the fence. So I knocked that mutha down as well.

I did all this shouting "HULK SMASH", and if you were there I would probably have battered you in two as well. It was that kind of football. When I finished, I rolled over and surveyed the wreckage of wood. And it felt good. I feel as though now I could cut down anything. I could cut down a helicopter as it flies in the sky, or a 40-foot pizza delivery boy. Nothing is out of reach. I enjoyed having something actually to do today, even if that was to continuously murder another living thing for a solid 90 minutes. Don't quote me on that.