Burning the elephant

Today I ache all over. My legs hurt, my sides hurt, my arms really hurt. My hands are a mess of blisters.

So what have I been doing to get myself in such a state? Chopping logs, that's what.

A ton and half of beech has been sitting in the field just beyond the garden for over six months now, mocking me. On Saturday I could take its taunts no more, and set about it with my trusty chainsaw. Thirty-odd long beech trunks rendered down into three-hundred or so foot long logs. Yesterday I set about these with my trusty axe - each round log split into four triangles.

I make that approximately nine-hundred swings of the axe in the course of an afternoon. My axe head weighs three kilograms, which means that I hefted over two and half tons of steel yesterday. And that's before I carted all of the chopped logs to the shed and stacked them. Over the course of the weekend I've probably lifted about six tons in all.

Coincidentally that's about what an adult African elephant weighs.

Burning the logs will keep me warmer over the winter than trying to set fire to an elephant.


Comments

Ouch, you should have spread that over two or three days.

But now you know how a knight in battle must feel, chopping up enemies. Only, you have to add the weight of the chainmail. And imagine the logs to stab back.

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