Denis Lehane: Buying a Robot at the ploughing
Denis Lehane at the National Ploughing championships where he met his new robot friend.
I purchased a robot at the ploughing and I am thrilled entirely.
He cost a pretty penny, but we won't worry about that now.
I have spread my repayments over the long finger (the very long finger) and that has taken the real sting out of it.
Being an able dealmaker, I got a new cap and a pair of shiny green wellingtons, for the robot, thrown into the bargain.
"He will make an excellent farmer," the robot salesman told me.
"But be warned," says he, "don't let him near the fencer wire. For one blast from that thing, could blow every bearing in his backside."
"Point well made," says I.
My new robot takes a size seven wellington boot, which is small for a man, but very big for a robot, the experts will say.
Before we left the ploughing fields of Screggan, he got a bit of a charge off the generator of a chip van, and by the time we arrived at 'The Horse and Jockey' in Thurles, he was fully charged and only rearing to stretch his metal legs.
Once inside the famous bar, I ordered a chicken supper, my robot ordered nothing.
"Yerra," says he "a mug of waste oil and a bowl of rusty nuts and bolts will do me fine, once we reach home."
"Good man," says I, as I tucked into my supper with gusto.
And better again, he then offered to drive the rest of the way home.
"Have a pint or two with the chicken supper." he suggested, "I can drive home. I have been programed to drive like Mario Andretti."
The robot was nothing short of a godsend.
And so it was there in the The Horse and Jockey, after a few pints that I merrily christened my new robot, Lester.
"I'm calling you Lester after the great Lester Piggott," says I. "For I feel that you will be around, for the long run."
"An excellent choice," the robot said, before reciting every race that Lester had won.
It took a while.
The spin home from Thurles was a most pleasant affair, for the robot drove in a very clinical fashion.
With the robot behind the wheel, all the short cuts were taken, short cuts through fields and up the sides of ditches.
The shoe was down the whole way.
"I'm a robot," says he laughing, "I'm immune from prosecution."
We were home before I knew it and with Lester then switched off for the night, I too was soon fast asleep.
The following morning we got to work straight away, with Lester the robot repairing an old galvanized roof at a speed that had never been witnessed on this farm before.
"He will do the work of forty men!" The robot salesman had said, and he wasn't far wrong.
The nails shot out of his arms, as if they had been fired by a machine gun.
Next, I asked if Lester could round up my half dozen suckers cows and calves.
They had gone astry in my absence.
Well, just like that, didn't Lester transform into some kind of helicopter, and was hovering over the herd, bringing them gently back over the boundary ditch in no time.
"Lester!" I roared up at the sky." You are a mighty man."
After lunch, I told Lester that I had to take a nap, and as I pulled my cap over my eyes, didn't he start piping out some gentle music, from his backside or someplace.
I had never heard a more pleasant sound.
This evening he milked my few cows in the old stall, and said that there would be no need to upgrade my facilities.
"But won't your back be killed from all the stooping?" I asked.
Well Lester had to laugh "Sure my metal back is as powerful as the hull of the Titanic."
And as I watch him park the tractor up on the slope this evening, I have to say that the robot I purchased at the Ploughing this year could well be the makings of me.
