Denis Lehane: €13bn Apple money should be spent on beds for farmers
Our Farming columnist Denis Lehane has hatched a plan for how farmers could spend Apple's €13bn in this week's Lighten Up.
When I was a young man, it was said that I spent too much time in bed.
Thank God now, as an older man, all the people who said such things are dead.
I still spend too much time in the bed. Guilty as charged, Your Honour.
But it can't be helped, for I'm a busy man.
On the farm, I can be constantly dragging something.
And off the farm, I am constantly supping something.
It's a catch-22. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.
And it's the mixing of the two that has me down on the pillow all night and sometimes into the day.
Indeed, I am down on my belly so much that if I were a cow, you would be inclined to shoot a bottle of Cal-Mag into my system in an effort to get me standing again.
But the reality is, I'm not suffering from grass Tetany nor Milk Fever.
The problem, as I see it, is that I am not being satisfied properly in the bed.
And if a man is not being satisfied in his bed, he really needs to look at his bed.
Without wanting to go into detail, my bed is old.
'Tis older than father time and contrary along with it.
If my bed was a tractor, it would be a vintage type, and no, not the type that is spruced up and on the road heading for a vintage show.
Only the one tossed in by a ditch someplace.
The problem with me and my sleeping has nothing to do with me and all to do with my bed.
My bed is no longer fit for purpose.
It's like that bike shed up there in Dáil Éireann; lessons will have to be learned.
I believe it's time that not only I, but every farmer in Ireland, got a new bed.
For if I am sleeping in unsatisfactory quarters, chances are every other farmer is too.
Our beds are our downfall, the thing that should be getting us up, is actually pulling us down.
We need new beds, and this is where the Apple money could come in right handy.
The way I look at the Apple money, if we don't spend it soon on something practical,
it will be squandered on something pointless.
This is Ireland, after all.
So before the €13bn is spent foolishly, I propose that we invest it in beds for tired farmers.
By my calculations, the money should be enough to buy every farmer in Ireland a double bed, with enough left over to purchase a side table and a drinking glass for our dentures.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a great problem with lying in bed for too long, and then there are more people in farming who have the opposite problem, in that they are not sleeping at all.
Tossing and turning in the bed. Like a newborn lamb struggling to latch onto the pap, these farmers are a right pity altogether.
Every man, and indeed every woman, deserves a good night's sleep, and if the sleep isn't occurring, investigations need to be undertaken.
Terms of reference need to be identified.
And I guarantee that when the findings are published, they will be the same story for us all.
Our problems are not in our heads; they are all in our beds.
Our problems in farming today are all beneath us.
