On Sunday there weren’t alarms going off in the morning, so we all slept to a decadent 7 o’clock. Those of us who were idiots the night before learnt how best to keep warm, which made bed that much more attractive, so we arose either groggy or in the case of some people, extra groggy. Breakfast was the usual affair – put what you can onto bread, put what you can into porridge and chew until you are done.
After this, I don’t know what happened to most people till about 9, but I got up and kicked Roy’s bright orange ball around until I fucked up and belted it over the fence.
Evidently, I see Roy as a fellow buckie drinking relatively stabby Scottish person. The irony being that I’m not Scottish and don’t like buckfast. Sorry Rudi, you still looked fucked.
After that, I took it back to the car park and we kicked it again until Neil and the other person showed up and took us back to the task of uprooting/smashing/slashing/chopping rhododendron.
Seeing as we had all got some practice in the day before, the rhododendron fell one after another. We wielded a variety of weapons, from blunt saws to sharp saw, as well as the odd hatchet. I was proud to see some of the dirties using their hands and tearing the bastard plant/tree hybrids out the ground. I myself was perfecting a method of removing the Rhodies tangly arms from the mor they sprawled in. The idea is basically to climb onto them and hang like a sloth / surf on them / body slam them until the roots are levered out of the ground. Then you embrace a squat or deadlift like posture and rip them free. Because of their shallow and crappy root structure, it is quite possible to remove a rhodie up to twice your height and up to the width of your thigh. It was hard work though, after a dozen I was ready to take a break, already down to my t-shirt and gloves.
The dirties didn’t give up though, so back I went crashing through the undergrowth, tearing down rhodies with the seething rage of a man who has done physics for far too long. Whether as lone wolves or working in tandem, the dirties destroyed most things in sight, and soon there were walls of corpses littering the forest floor.
Around noon was when the first of us started to lie on the piles of our deceased enemies for a nap. The more diligent went onto new lands searching for bigger game. After one last rhodie battle, I too was about ready for a nap, so climbed a big tree and rested in its branches.
After this, it was time for a pleasant stroll, first to to the river where we split up, some of us going to the castle, some of us up the hill, others just enjoying the sunshine. Personally, I ended up wandering the gardens with President Cameron, discussing amongst other things the bleakness of the future. Then Cameron started talking about a tractor he saw… On our tour we saw a mutant larch, one of the 100 most important trees in Scotland. We talked about how deciding which 100 trees are most important probably isn’t a real job. We eventually stumbled back to the animals – angry geese, flappy ducks and some worse for wear alpacas. I’ll never forget the black one, it haunts my dreams with it’s manic stare.
Finally, we went to the ranger’s house for some soup, lasagne and popping candy spread with whatever we could find to put it on. We had weird conversations, which I think meant it was about time to go home. Then we went home, and then we went to the pub.