Castrating calves could give you nightmares
Your man Rambo was on the box. It was some class of a war film, and there he was, dishing out haymakers and sidewinders like nobody’s business.
It was a predictable enough old saga and, soon, I drifted off to sleep.
Only to have a strange dream.
Your man Rambo came to life again in my dream.
He had come to stay on the farm for the weekend.
He was returning from some war or other, and needed a place to lie low for a while.
I had no problem with him staying, so long as he did his fair share around the place, he was as welcome as the postman with a grant cheque.
Now, you’d think that Rambo would be a hardy hoor, and that castrating a few calves would be like second nature to him.
Well think again. He wouldn’t even hold their tails, because they were too dirty, he wouldn’t hold this thing because it was that way, and that thing because it was this way.
In the finish, I sent him back into the house, the devil blast him, he got on my nerves to such a degree. “Make the tay”, I roared after him, “and send Ellen out, and be lively about it!”
Having finished the tay, I looked across the table at Rambo, who was now oiling up a bazooka. By all accounts, there was another war to be fought somewhere, and seemingly his army buddies couldn’t scratch themselves without Johnny Rambo there to hold their hands.
After his display with the calves, I put it to him that he’d want to pull up his socks, if he was to defend himself from a marauding gang of terrorists.
“Terrorists”, laughs Rambo. “Terrorists are nothing in comparison to the hardships endured by Irish farm families.”
“True enough”, I countered, “you’re not as ignorant as you look”.
And with that, I awoke to find Ellen coming in the door. “How were the children”, she asked the corpse strewn in front of the TV.
“Like a dream” says I, dusting myself down. “I could have looked after them in my sleep”.
