Whacker column
I’D like to say I bounced out of bed the other day.
Instead I felt as though I had been bounced.
While I have been putting the odd bit of stiffness and soreness down to the previous day’s hard yakka, that excuse is starting to wear a bit thin, even to me.
This sort of picks up where I left off last month.
Medications aside (and no, I still don’t take any) the truth is, the old Whacker is getting, well, he’s getting old. Older anyway.
Thank heavens the missus recently decided it was time for a new bed. The one she has had installed is much higher than its predecessor, which means I can sit into it, and when I get out I am at the right height to almost step cleanly away, instead of demanding my knees haul me vertical once again.
God bless technology and designers for coming up with stuff this nifty.
Which sort of brings me to the point mentioned above. Sort of.
It’s the little things, I have discovered, that can prove your undoing.
Such as the son who found me sound asleep in the tractor. Dead to the world (but still breathing, although he says he wasn’t sure at first) I was saved by the GPS doing all the driving and him finding me before the satellites ran out of ideas.
Then I sort of nodded off driving the car into town. I would have got away with it, despite the damage to the gate and the front corner of the car, if the missus hadn’t been in the passenger seat.
“Maybe,” she lectured, “it’s time you thought about slowing down and taking a few days off each week.”
Since that day she has refused to get in any vehicle I am driving, she hides the car keys, has poisoned the children against letting me drive the grandchildren, and is generally driving me nuts.
She had already been nagging me to get tested for sleep apneah, which I clearly can’t even spell, let alone understand. But basically it means you go to bed each night plugged into a machine which shoves air up your nose and down your throat so your other half can enjoy a snore-free night.
OK, so we are all slowing down a little bit, but I can still give the youngsters a run for their money – unless they actually want to run.
These days I am more of the Cliff Young shuffler, but like the good old tortoise I always get there in the end.
It’s the quality of your input, not the quantity, I explain to the next generations.
I’ll ignore the little smart arse who tries to quote me from a few years ago when I said in the farming big picture, go for quality but focus on quantity if you ever want the job finished. We’ll see how much he’s laughing at the next family succession meeting.
But I have had to admit (to myself only at this stage) that my years of hard work, not to mention footy injuries, that incident with the bull, a few knocks drafting sheep, not waiting for the right equipment when doing some heavy work, et cetera, might just be catching up with the Whacker.
Leaving me feeling a bit whacked a bit more often than the good old days.
Lesser men have bowed out long before me, as you would expect, but it’s not easy being an industry icon, being the standard by which all farmers are judged, setting the benchmark and setting it high, for all things … “wake up you silly old bugger”.
It’s the missus again.
Back trying to prove her point.
No, I alleged, spluttering for breath and a little dignity.
No missus, I had not fallen asleep on the dunny.
I was merely contemplating the past and thinking about what was coming next.
I think.
