I am talking about builders. Builders are all bad. Builders are a carousing bunch of fucking shyster bastards.

I know you can’t generalise – but I am and they are. If we had to destroy all builders I know we might lose a few good men, a few honest builders might perish – but surely this would be a small price to pay. The few would have to lay down their lives that we might rid our planet of this scourge of evil degenerates. And they are always men. I’ve seen a couple of girl ones on TV, but I don’t really believe they exist. The fairer sex don’t do building.

Besides… there is nothing fair about builders.

I think we can trace their malice back to their background – again I would qualify this generalisation by having spoken to numerous builders over the last ten years (a deeply unpleasant activity and one I would urge you all to avoid, because if there is one thing worse than watching a builder fuck something up, it’s having to have the bastard explain how he’s managed to do it afterwards).

Builders were the stupid kids at school, or to use the correct educational term ‘the window lickers’

Gradually emerging from the depths of hrough a process of attrition and male-rape from another builder, have learned vaguely how to do something with a saw or hammer (other than beating their little sister until she submits).

From then on in it’s an add in the local paper and telephone directory, or maybe half an hour a week in a ’special’ college for special children and builders, and hey ho off they go, for £150 a day tax-free. The bastards. Lying in wait for an unsuspecting member of the public to call them up and ask, ever so politely, if they could do something – for money.
Then their into full builder-mode. Them um, they ah, they come ’round when it fucking suits them, they start the meter running the moment one of their (multiple10000 offspring) answers the ‘phone. They’ve got you. They own you. You owe them.

No job is ever simple, no job ever straightforward. By age twenty five the average builder has 75% more facial wrinkles than the average person (www.researchonbastards.com) from screwing their ugly bastard faces up at jobs. ‘Oooh, well, I suppose I could….. but then ……’ – hell, go ahead, insert your own fucking scenario.

Is there another job where you don’t turn up for a morning because you were getting things ready to do the fucking job ? Do ambulance drivers turn up on foot, frown, then fuck off to the ambulance showroom to pick out an ambulance and some bandages ? Do cafe owners take your order then fuck off to slaughter a pig, bake some bread, milk a few bastards cows, toss-off into the mixture to turn it sour and add viscosity, and then bring you back your fucking cum-sodden bacon sandwich – I don’t think so.

Is there another job where you can fuck off from one thing, half way through it, then turn up intermitently when it suits you to peruse the fucking Godzilla-esque carnage you’ve created of someones home, whilst they cry, shudder, nursing a hooping-cough ridden baby in arms wet with tears of bankrupt sorrow – I don’t think so.

Is there another job where it’s acceptable to come into someones home, fucking come in there, do a shit job, do a fucking job like an untrained orang-utang, fucking shit all over the walls, start dry humping the fucking television whilst your wifes trying to watch Home Xtreme Makeover Celebrity Fat Child Auction Factor For The Queer Guy Extra, block the drive with some skanky fucking pikey van filled with crack-raged teenage offspring ‘helpers’ and other assorted career criminals peering out and planning which of your pets to rape. I doubt it very much.

Shit, then they bill you for it.

People critisize George Bush, indeed the whole western democratic structure for destroying the infastructure of nations – but they’re fucking gently stroking blades of dewy morning grass compared to the havoc wreaked by the building profession to the homes of millions around the globe. Forget Amityville – I can positively hear my house screech in terror each time I invite one of these shitheels around to ‘do a job’.

It would be fair to say then, that my faith in the building profession is not what is used to be. Experience is the keen knife that hurts, builders repeatedly take that knife and twist it around my eye-sockets.

Then I have to pay them, somehow.

This post regards the time I, like a stupid cracker, cut half my ear off by mistake. It’s a cautionary tale, I re-read it myself from time to time simply to marvel at my own stupidity.

We have mini-hospitals here in Wales. We live between a mini-hospital and a big hospital, so in the event of an emergency it’s a toss up – which way do you drive ?
Do you go to the big one, and risk waiting for hours, ignored as you die slowly from blood-loss. Or do you go to the mini-hospital – and get some seventeen year old trainee who’s nursing ability doesn’t go farther than making you a refreshing cup of tea. It’s a gamble.

When I accidentally chopped the bottom off my left ear (it wasn’t completely off, it was dangling by a thin piece of skin) I discussed the matter rationally with my wife, and opted for the mini-hospital. Big mistake.

They didn’t have a fucking clue, although they all had a good look at it. We declined the tea and ended up doing an extra-long journey to the big hospital. A young doctor named ‘Theo’ saw me right away, put some white paper sheet over my head (with a little hole in it for the ear) and sewed the thing back on. The sewing was in two stages – bottom of ear back together, then ear up to head (the wire had sliced into the side of the ear, then torn downwards on it’s way out). The bit where he sewed it onto my head really hurt. Under the white paper sheet I was making all kinds of faces.

How did I do it ?

Working on the smallholding of course!

The previous owner (or ‘Cunt’ as I like to refer to him) had erected massive aviaries all around the place. These monstrous cages housed his exotic bird collection. These monstrous cages were built from steel, bolted together, and wire, fixed to the steel.
I used various techniques to dismantle them, but on a hot summers day with Metallica blaring from my ghetto blaster I decided that going in shirtless, with a big fucking sledgehammer (16lb – I thought the 14lb’er I own too light) and spin around smashing the shit out of everything in a Braveheart battle thrash metal frenzy.
This worked a treat, I spun in the cages, sweating, bits of wood metal and wire flying all over the place. James Hetfield was singing about raping and I was getting back to my Viking roots with some ultraviolence. That was until a piece of wood spun around and hit me hard on the side of the head (near that soft bit behind the eye).
Everything spun. I said something like ‘ouch’. I touched my head and there was blood there – so I staggered towards the house and called the wife out – to see if she could kiss it and make it better.
She reacted in her usual calm way and began screaming that my ear was hanging off. By now blood was pissing out, and we decided a visit to the hospital was in order.

I think there was around fifteen stitches (I’m not good with remembering numbers). I looked like Frankenstein for a few weeks, but then it heeled up nicely.

As with most injuries, I think there was a lesson to be learned here, that being to wear safety goggles, and ear-guards when dismantling big metal cages. Also to take ones time with the cage, this lead to me buying an angle-grinder – which has since come in useful for a variety of jobs around the place. So every cloud has a silver lining.

It ruined that Valentines day though.

The cats here haven’t been doing shit since we got central heating installed. I’m afraid this is another one about cats. At this rate I’ll be posting knitting patterns on this motherfucker. Watch this space yarn-fans!

They used to be out in all weather, terrorising, mutilating and murdering anything that moved, and creating Joel Peter Witkin-like sculptures across the dining room floor with the gooey remains. Many a morning I’ve slipped on guts, careless, cursing and barefooted. The feeling of mouse entrails oozing between ones toes is an integral part of countryside living around these parts.

Then last month we had oil central heating installed – the house had become unbearably cold, and so stretching my credit to the absolute limit (and sending interest repayment spiralling into the ionosphere), I had a full system installed. Now it’s like the Caribbean here, all day every day.

In this tropical atmosphere the cats have become soft. They reside in languor, draped across the furniture – occasionally venturing out into the cold for a hurried piss. The two short haired felines have taken the playing the steel drums, whilst the Persian has started to grow dreadlocks and demands yams with every meal.

They continue to create turds of a toxicity level Al-Quaeda scientists would be proud of – but that’s about it. Their hunting days are long gone.

As a result of this we now have rats. Our green thing (a large container which looks like it used to be part of a lorry, and which some previous ‘broke assed’ owner installed between the stables and the barn, used as a storage facility) is alive with the buggers. It’s gone all James Herbert (before he became a mewling ponce).

We’ve been using it to keep food for the horses and chickens, and it’s become a fucking mess, full of old cans, empty corn bags, old paint cans and general crap we toss in there. Not surprising then that on Sunday the wife saw a monster rat running around in it. She screamed so loud one of my fillings cracked. I immediately brought out my air rifle, in the hopes of finally killing something with it. No such luck. The rat got away.

We cleaned out the green thing and stored the animal feed in a secure place. No more nest for the rats. I left the door wide open in the hope that some other predator would pop in and get medieval on the rat family. I considered pissing on the nest, but didn’t for fear the sick fucks might like it.

I am sure it’s the rats that have been taking the chickens. Single birds have been going missing (as mentioned in previous posts), and returning looking ill, then dying. A fox would simply have massacred them. I blamed the buzzards, but now I’m thinking rats. Bites from rats would potentially have poisoned the birds. From this I can conclude that me installing central heating has cost 2 birds. Also that I need to find a way to restore the fighting spirit to my two short haired moggies, currently rolling a joint (after a heavy meal) on the sofa behind me. This is a complex ecosystem I have created. It needs constant management.

“Experience is a keen knife that hurts, whilst it extracts the cataract that blinds.”

It’s 11th December. Not nice. Weather could strip the skin off your face, get water on your hands outside and it’s like Men Behind The Sun over here. This post is a consideration on whether it is right and just to kill foxes, and represents a balanced argument I feel.

I let the chickens out, we keep a few, free-range, for the eggs. I like the little fuckers. They cluck, scratch, and follow me when I’m working outside. They forage for worms and eat some of the most evil looking bugs you ever did see. The cockerel looks after his bitches better than Dolemite. He’s a true player and has fucked me up on a number of occasions. I have the scars to prove it.

Anyway – He got his arse-feathers bitten off last year fighting off a fox, I found him up a tree three days after the attack, bum raw. He pulled through though.

Last Saturday a chicken is missing. Gone all day then I saw my Lurcher Sean (after Mr Connery – I name the male animals around here, and I don’t fuck around with no ‘Tigger’ fucking names neither) sniffing and there she was, flat on the ground. Harvey was trying to hump her, but she was, to use a medical term, ‘fucked’.

So I carried her to the house, put her on the ground, then she stood up. Still ill. Examined her, took her into the house, put her in a cage with bedding and food. She lasted ’till the evening, then died. Which brings me to the point of this post – foxes. And buzzards.

Years back when I was in University, the only decent essay I wrote (there wasn’t much call for that type of thing on a business course) was about fox hunting. I looked up all the stats, did my background research and knocked out an earnest ‘Distinction’ grade thing on why it was all wrong, how it didn’t really control fox numbers, and all rich people are wankers (in many parts of the country toffs breed extra foxes simply to give them a better chance of catching them in the hunt – hardly reducing the number for farmers then!). I even wrote to my local MP when Tony Blair didn’t make good on his promise to ban hunting with dogs (he’s since gotten around to it, but then of course invaded Iraq and spoiled everything).

But the main thing is, whilst living in the city I didn’t keep chickens.

First time foxes attacked here I re-thought my whole attitude to hunting. Second time I bought paid off some ‘good ole boys’ that live locally, encouraging them to go for a good blast around where I live. Third time I bought an air rifle. If it ever happens again I’m getting the full fire-arms license and going on a postal wildlife massacre throughout Wales.

Poor little hen (she died earlier, remember ?) crawled all the way back here once before – a fox (or buzzard) took her back in July, she was gone for over a week. Then one afternoon she came hopping back, ate some corn and went about her henny business. Saturday her number came up, just over a year old.

I know foxes got to eat. But as an apex predator I reserve the right to riddle the local wildlife with bullets to secure my chickens. I changed my mind on hunting. I don’t want to wear a costume, blow a horn or ponce around on a horse.

Must control all ground action through superior firepower.

“All my misfortunes come of having thought too well of my fellows”. Rousseau