The Wood is fighting back!

This weekend I have had my fair share of troubles with the common wood.
First of all I decided to repaint the summerhouse in our garden. Luckily I started at the blind side, facing away from any view and only seen by the back fence (which hadn’t really cared about anything ever!). Once that side was done my wife came for an inspection of the work and remarked that it looked like a dog’s breakfast.
She was right! It looked streaky and downright horrible.
It was then that I figured out that I had bought the wrong painting stuff. It was too late to get to the store in time to buy the right paint so we opted for visiting my mother-in-law instead.
She led us into her garden and showed us a lilac tree which had taken on enormous dimensions and she was complaining that it took away all the light and the nice view to the cricket field behind her house.
“Noooooo proooblem!!!” I said, waving my hand back and forth in a dismissive sort of way. “I will come by tomorrow and cut it off. Won’t take me more than 3 minutes!”
(Reader please note: Why am I such an idiot and have not learned in all these years that whenever I say things as if they are the easiest things on earth those very things conspire against me in a spectacular way?!)

So yesterday (Sunday) we returned armed with 2 saws and a branch cutter to remove the offending article.
First I cut all the smaller branches off, which was easy and gave me an enormous feeling of power and achievement. Then it was the tree trunk’s turn. I positioned the saw near the bottom of the tree and started sawing . . . and sawing . . . and sawing . . . and getting hot . . and bothered . . and the saw got stuck . . and I was not even half way through the gorram tree and my strength was gone.

“I will go home and fetch the electric saw!” I puffed. “See you in an hour!”
So off I went, sucking the last cold air out of the air con just to get my breath back and lower my temperature to below boiling point and returned as promised some time later.
I hooked up the saw, aligned it with the tree and looked on in disbelief as the tree just laughed at me and the saw had about as much impact as an ashtray on a motorbike! None!
By now it was mid afternoon and I could hear (but not see) the cricketers playing on the field. Back to the manual sawing then!
‘Ritch-Ratch’ went the saw. ‘Puff-Puff’ went the Erik. ‘Drip-Drip’ went the sweat and even though I was now 8/10th through the tree it didn’t even sway.
“Oh, you poor boy! I should have never asked you to do it! You will break you back! Just leave it now and I will get someone in to finish it off!”
“Give up??? Now?? After all this??? Never!!! I will not be beaten by gorram wood!
NEVER!!!” I spewed, nearly bursting a blood vessel.
“Yeah,” my wife said, “It’s personal now! Once Erik has got the bit between his teeth it’s kill or be killed!”
And so it was that after hours of frustration at 4:26 p.m. British Summer Time I finally killed the tree just before the 3rd wicket fell in the local cricket derby which I could now clearly observe.
“Great!” my mother-in-law exclaimed, “If you could now cut the branches into 10 inch (30 cm) pieces, I will be able to give it to the people down the road as fire wood for their open fireplaces!”
I laughed at the cunning of this well-timed joke until I realised that she was not joking.
So even in death the tree had the last laugh as I spent the rest of the day sawing, sweating, cursing and hurting.

I don't know . . . . . !!
The things we must do when we don’t manage to control our mouth.