We build a chicken run.

Posted on by JonnyB

The coop has been up for some weeks; the ‘Keeping Chickens – For Dummies!’ books are well-thumbed. We purchased building materials ages back, taking care to measure carefully and get exactly the right length of wire needed; the ground had been cleared and the chickensdirect websites bookmarked.

It is good to live off the land like this. Once I get a couple of chickens I will practically be Ray Mears.

It is possible that there have been longer building projects – the cathedral thing in Barcelona, perhaps, or the last Olympics. But it is important to get these things right. Plus we had been hinting to Len the Fish for ages that he might come round and ‘give us some advice’ which is code for ‘do all the work for us’. As it is, he agreed to turn up to help for the couple of hours that it would take us.

By day two of construction, I am feeling a bit down. Short Tony has disappeared to buy more wire, and I have been struggling for ages to hammer the same small staple into a piece of wood. Meanwhile, Len the Fish is erecting, wiring, twisting, hammering, digging, measuring and fixing.

“Thanks ever so much for your help again Len,” I mumble. I am embarrassed. “If you ever need some… ummmmm… humorous writing done, then just…”

I tail off lamely. It is shameful. Len the Fish is brilliant at everything practical. What he doesn’t know about practical things isn’t worth knowing. He has given up his entire week to do our fencing for us, and I have cock all that I will ever be able to offer him in return, apart from a pint, which doesn’t count as he will buy me one back. Despite being so powerful, I have about two practical skills in the world: I can use a patent type markup system that sends instructions via a modem to a plant in Watford that then couriers back your typesetting at twice a day intervals if it is before 1991, and I can name the local newspaper that covers each town in the UK, apart from the ones that I have forgotten.

“A pint. Just buy me a pint,” he replies, not asking me about Exeter, or Mansfield, or Leigh-on-Sea, or even giving any indication that he requires humorous writing services. I return to the single post that I have insisted on putting in myself.

“Huge gales forecast for tomorrow,” he says, not entirely reassuringly.

By dusk the run is complete. A happy home for six chickens, that we will probably purchase some time in the year 2163. Mrs Short Tony’s car draws up and she steps out.

Her jaw drops. “It’s a bit… bigger… than you claimed it would be.”

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The tree leans.

Posted on by JonnyB

I rest against the garden wall, looking with anxiety at the mass of the trunk. It is amazing how a tiny little apple tree can suddenly appear so solid. I scratch my head and walk thoughtfully away from it into the front garden, clutching the rope in my hand.

As far as I can work it out, things can go one of two ways. Left to its own devices, the tree will fall backwards on to the outbuilding. Whereas if I pull on the rope with all my might, the tree will fall directly towards me into the safe expanse of Short Tony’s front garden. With luck, I will be able to leap out of the way.

“Are you ready?” asks Short Tony.

“What exact definition of the word ‘ready’ do you…” I begin, but my words are drowned out by the chainsaw. He starts cutting a wedge shape into the trunk. This, I reason, should help the tree fall towards me and not backwards towards the building.

I take the strain on the rope.

I don’t know why it is. I am reasonably tall, and I have not had a shave, and I am wearing old clothes that are covered in paint and stuff from where I have done DIY in them, and I am taking the strain on a rope that is tied to a tree that is being felled by a man with a chainsaw. You would think that I would look a bit more rugged. As it is, I can’t help thinking that if a passing photography student captures the scene in order to display a large black-and-white print in a pseudy photography gallery, he may well be tempted to caption it: ‘Nancy Boy Holding A Rope (2008)’.

I do not seem to be able to get a proper grip. My feet are not spaced correctly. The tree appears to be quite heavy. I strain hard. This is not good. The front lawn is all around me – all I need to do is to stop the tree falling backwards. I can feel its weight. Stop it going backwards! Stop it going backwards!

“Almost there,” warns Short Tony.

The chainsaw slices through. I give a huge pull on the rope. The tree falls almost perfectly sideways, taking the top off the wall and coming to rest in a cloud of twigs and masonry across the driveway.

There is a short silence.

“A lot of that cement was loose anyway,” Short Tony offers, tactfully.

“Ummmmm,” I reply in embarrassment.

“Anyway, do you want any more free wood?” he asks.

Free wood!!!

“Go and give him a hand,” orders the LTLP.

Posted on by JonnyB

Short Tony is standing in his front garden waving a chainsaw around. I am unenthusiastic about going over to help. There is such a fine line between being ‘a Good Samaritan’ and ‘a statistic’.

“He won’t need my help,” I protest. “Plus if I go and offer, knowing that he won’t need my help, he will just think that I am angling for some free wood.”

“Go on,” she insists, kicking me out of the car with a look.

I amble to Short Tony’s house. He is sizing up a sizeable old apple tree, which has been semi-uprooted and is leaning precariously. Miraculously, it has missed the house and everything else of value. So far.

“Do you need a hand?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t mind, actually,” he replies. “Do you want some free wood?”

Result!

I scuttle back to the Cottage to change into some old trousers. I have recently broken the habit of a lifetime, and bought some trendy new jeans in ‘Gap’ and I would not want these to get muddy. (For those who live in the middle of nowhere and not near a ‘Gap’ shop, the ‘Gap’ is basically a store that is frequented by forty-somethings who are seeking to maintain the heady sartorial excitement of their late thirties). I reappear some time later in my old gardening clothes.

Short Tony hands me a rope and gestures towards the tree. He has a small outbuilding in which he has installed a home gymnasium; the direction in which the tree has half-fallen is towards this. Clearly this is the way it will continue to fall should somebody attack it with a chainsaw – hence the rope. It transpires that my job is to take the strain on the rope, pulling with all my might, so that the tree, when felled, will not demolish the outbuilding.

To be, unfortunately, continued.

I go to the Village Pub.

Posted on by JonnyB

“I’ll be about an hour,” I promise.

Four hours later, I am sat hammering out ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel, whilst Short Tony yells out the words very slightly out of time with the rhythm. The Toddler looks on bemused. My inbox bings with a confirmation from Ebay – a bid of twelve pounds for a ‘Caution – Power Wires’ sign that you affix to the bottom of telegraph poles.

The LTLP is unimpressed.

“You’re not leaving. You’re not leaving,” Short Tony and Eddie had insisted to me as I had attempted to put my coat on at the bar. Fortunately I have always been fairly unsusceptible to peer pressure. Unfortunately, however, I am pathetically weak when it comes to beer pressure, and had stayed for one more pint, a couple of large whisky macs and a test drive of the new barrel of Oyster Stout.

I think Sunday lunchtimes might be the new Friday nights. Or, if I am honest, the Sunday lunchtime Omnibus repeat of Friday nights. There is a nice atmosphere in the Village Pub, and a civilised feeling, and free sausages. I have always resisted lunchtime drinking, in that it tends to eat up the entire day; however when the highlight of the rest of your day entails giving a small child a bath and then watching ‘Lewis’ on ITV there seems to be an argument for screaming and hammering on the pub doors at five minutes to noon.

I do not win my Ebay auction. This is a relief the next morning. Somewhere, somebody out there with a worse hangover than me is clutching their head, looking out upon a telegraph pole and moaning ‘why…?’ Mrs Short Tony arrives at the front door to see if I still have her husband’s shoe.