Today.

The Winter Solstice.

The nights are no longer drawing in, and from today I start to look forward to longer days.  I know there will be no noticeable difference tomorrow or the day after or for some time for that matter, but that’s not important.  What is important is knowing that tomorrow will not be darker than today.

There is a remarkable event here in Ireland at sunrise on the Winter Solstice.  Some of you may have heard of it?  At the moment of sunrise on this one day of the year, the suns rays shine across the garden and light up a pile of old whiskey bottles in the back corner of the garden.  Many historians and archaeologists have commented on this unique feature of my garden and some have dated the whiskey bottles as being there since the Bronze Age, and who am I to argue with the experts?

I suppose it’s nearly time to start thinking about putting up some decorations around the house?

Thinking doesn’t cost anything.

I love the smell.

Very relaxing.

The neighbours can fuck off though.

If they want some they can damn well grow their own.

The old estate is getting a little out of hand and the only way to tame it is a show of brute force.  I do my gardening with slash-hooks, chain saws and strimmers.

My strimmer isn’t one of those pansy ones that plugs in.  No.  It is an honest-to-God power yoke with a two-stroke engine.  I think I may have overdone the oil to petrol mix a tad as it can be quite smoky.  It was a calm day, so when I fired up the strimmer, I disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke which enveloped me for the hour or so I was out there.

For hours after I finished, I could taste the burnt oil.  I realised at that point that not only had I been breathing burning oil for an hour or so, but I must have indulged in a massive dose of carbon monoxide, not to mention a lethal dose of other toxins, poisons and carcinogens.  I would hazard a guess that an hour of that cocktail would be equivalent to smoking around a thousand cigarettes?

So where is the health warning?  Where is ASH when you need ‘em?  Why isn’t the State looking after my health?

“Strimming can cause a painful death”

“Strimming can lower your sperm count”

“Want to quit strimming?  Contact your doctor or pharmacist”

The Nanny State are missing out on a nice little niche market here.  I don’t know how they missed it.

Strimming may not be addictive [unless you are a very strange person], but it is highly contagious.  I have noticed in the past that whenever I start, I am the one to shatter the peace and quiet of the countryside.  By the time I have finished though, there are usually three or four strimmers, chainsaws or other two-strokes running in the neighbourhood.

The thing that concerns me most is that strimming may lead to harder drugs.

Like four-strokes?

A neighbour decided to fell some trees a few days ago, and since then I have been woken early every morning by the sounds of chainsaws and tree munchers.  I can’t even have my afternoon nap, and that makes me irritable.

By this morning, I had had enough.

Today I hired my own tree fellers [actually there were four of them] and they came with a bigger muncher than the neighbour’s one.  They arrived, and battle commenced.

The neighbour’s muncher tried to compete, but mine had a deeper, more angry note.  My lot had more chainsaws too.

It was not a pretty sight.  The neighbour’s lot realised early on that they hadn’t a chance, but made a valiant, if futile attempt to fight back.  The battle was swift, vicious and bloody.

Of course the neighbour’s lot lost.  They packed their bags, their chain saws and the muncher and they went home with their tails between their legs.

My lot did a great job of cleaning up the mess.  There isn’t a leaf, a twig or a drop of blood left.

At last, I can have my afternoon nap.

Quiet, please…….

As well as a dog, two guinea pigs, an occasional hedgehog, a squirrel, Bertie the Heron [who I haven’t seen in a while] and a semi-tame wife, I now seem to have a fox.

Reynard first appeared on Christmas night.

I don’t know how the fuck he gets in or gets out, as the fencing here is nearly good enough to keep Sandy from wandering.  He’s quite tame and occasionally leers at Sandy through the glass doors.  That doesn’t go down too well with Sandy as you might imagine.

I always know when he’s around as he trips all the silent alarms, though he hasn’t discovered the minefield yet.

I have tried photographing him, but the bugger is a bit camera shy and fecks off when he sees me trying to get a shot.

I did manage to get a shot of him last night, while Sandy was trying to tear a hole through the wall beside me.  Photographs are silent, so you can’t hear the sound of teeth on concrete, which is probably just as well as it is second only to the sound of a nail being dragged across glass.

It’s not easy shooting foxes.

“Nah,” says I. “It’s holding the wall up.”

“Don’t be smart,” says Herself.  “It looks terrible.  Go out and remove it.”

I did.

Now I have to rebuild the end wall.

*sigh*

Others of you live in the suburbs where you are unaware of my difficulties.

You see, I live in the country and, while that is the only place I would wish to live, it does have one or two minor drawbacks.

My problem is my boundary.

Unlike apartments [which don’t have acres of land] or the suburbs [where most gardens have straight walls or fences] my boundary consists of fencing, trees, shrubs and in some areas, stretches of land that would be the envy of any wilderness trekker.

The problem with this kind of boundary is that it is damned difficult to make dog-proof.

Our Sandy is the most intelligent animal I have ever encountered, but her intelligence has its Achilles’ Heel.  She is fucking stupid when it comes to traffic.

She is fine when she is behind the wheel of a car, but once she sets her paws on the road she loses all sense of self preservation.  I have seen her in the past, walking merrily along the middle of the road, while cars zap past her on both sides.  I have seen her casually step out in front of cars, which luckily have stopped in time.  As a pedestrian, she is an idiot.

So I have to do my damndest to keep her from getting onto the road.  She keeps making holes in the fencing, and I have to keep searching for them and blocking them.  What is amazing is that some of those holes are very small, and the only proof I have that it is her escape route is the lining of fur around the edge.

Building a fence through the middle of a bramble hedge isn’t easy.  In fact, it is fucking painful, as the tears and scratches on my arms will testify.

Sadly, it has become a game for her.  Occasionally she will get out, and I will panic.  I rush out to call her back in, and there she is, sitting outside the gate with a big “Hah!!  Fooled you again” grin on her face.

I have tried everything else.  I have tried tying her up when she is outside, but the just puts on a miserable face, and I feel like a right bastard.

For the last few days, I have been letting her out and then standing watching her.  She is very fucking cute, and won’t try to get out if I’m watching, as that would give the location of her route away.  But I can’t spend my life standing looking out a window waiting for a dog to piss or dump.  And anyway, she won’t dump if anyone is watching so the exercise is self defeating.  She is very modest, is our Sandy.

I am going to try a new technique.

I have heard of these electronic fences, and they are supposed to work.

You string a length of wire along the boundary, and attach it to a transmitter.  The dog wears a collar, and when she gets within range of the wire, the collar gives a warning beep.

If she ignores the beep and gets closer to the wire, the collar zaps about 5,000 volts through her which should be enough to deter anyone from crossing the line.

I am collecting it tomorrow.

I hope it works.

If it does, I’m getting a collar for Herself too.

This is a day for the Great Outdoors.

Maybe a game of golf?

I just don’t feel like dishing out the shit today.

Sometime on Saturday night some Bronze Age Tinkers broke into my lands and built this:

Now what in the name of Jayzus do I want with a portal dolmen?

I tried to get rid of it but the fucking think weighs a ton and is much too heavy for me to move.  TAT and our K8 called around yesterday for a barbeque and the three of us tried to shift it, but we couldn’t budge it an inch.

I phoned the National Museum this morning to see if they wanted to come and take it away, but they said they had enough already.  They suggested that I apply for a grant to convert it into a tourist attraction, but I pointed out to them that it was my mission in life to rid the country of tourists, not attract more of the buggers.  Mind you, free money sounds nice, so I may apply yet, and then surround it with minefields?

I am baffled though as to how those Megalithic vandals built it.  There are no tyre marks on the lawn, so they couldn’t have used a JCB, and anyway we all know that Bronze Age people weren’t very good with machinery.

Herself has taken quite a fancy to it.

She now reckons she wants to be cremated and her ashes buried under it.  That is fine by me, and I suggested that as we had the barbeque going, we might as well do it there and then.  She changed her mind unfortunately.

So now I am lumbered with a pile of rocks on my land.  It’s a right curse.  I am going to have to mow around it somehow.

I suppose though it is quite something to be the owner of the world’s newest four thousand year old antiquity?

I wonder if the Guinness Book of Records would be interested?

It was built the best part of two hundred years ago, and was built in the traditional style.  None of your concrete block or timber frame shit here – the house is constructed out of granite boulders.

The builders, or whatever they were, are gone now and the work is complete apart from a bit of decoration but I’ll tell you about that another day.

The place is just about back to normal, apart from some flood damage, a collapsed ceiling and the fact that we can’t use the jax or use electricity any more. 

One aspect of the building has left me with a bit of a problem though.  In the course of their shenanigans, they removed some of the original wall, and we now have these massive boulders lying around the place.

One of the boulders has caught my eye.  It’s a huge rectangular slab of granite, which I think originally took the load from the roof, which explains why the slates are starting to slide down.  It occurred to me that this slab would make a very attractive seat in the garden.  I thought it would look nice with a boulder under each end to raise it, and with a bit of luck it could be mistaken for a Portal Dolmen which would mean we would be entitled to all sorts of grants from the National Museum.

My problem is how to shift it.  The fucking thing must weigh nearly half a ton, and I don’t think Herself is up to carrying that kind of weight on her back.  I am a very considerate husband and would never ask her to carry anything that a JCB might have trouble with.

I have to move it about a hundred yards.  I thought of dragging it, but that would chew up what’s left of the lawn.  I can’t roll it because it isn’t round.  I can’t carry it.  I’m stumped.

Were is Iron Age Man when you really need him?