The end of Janathon and near death experiences
Although Highway Kind coined the phrase ‘An annual festival of activity and excuses’, it wasn’t meant to be taken quite as literally as I seemed to have done this year. It wasn’t a totally terrible effort but I have made a lot of apologies for my slacking. BUT, in my defence, I do have a great excuse for my slackness over the last few days – a tree tried to kill me.
This evil bastard tree fell on top of the house on Wednesday night while I was reading in bed (The Safety of Objects by AM Homes, in case you’re interested. Buy it, it’s brilliant, just don’t read it near any trees).
(My head was a few inches behind the top left window. The one the tree is on.)
At first I thought it was the mice or squirrels or whatever it was that’s been living in the roof. Then I thought, they’re a bit nosier than usual. Then I thought, are there dogs in the roof? Then there was a loud crash and I thought, fuck, something’s coming through the ceiling, I’d better get out of here and on getting to the landing, Shaun came out of the bathroom and went to investigate the source of the sound then came back in and told me there was a tree on top of the house. Oh. Deciding that the bedroom might not be the safest place to sleep, we decamped to the conservatory where I spent a sleepless night listening to the rain and the wind and wondering if the trees in the garden were close enough to kill me if they fell over.
No more trees tried to kill me but the next evening all I wanted to do was sit on the sofa and drink wine and watch old episodes of Waterloo Road. Yes, this is how I celebrated still being alive. Party on.
Anyway, well done everyone who didn’t slack as much as I did.
p.s. We got our revenge on the tree by getting two men with chainsaws round to chop it up into many pieces. Ha.