The Human Javelin and Other Maesyffynnon Adventures
When we arrived at Maesyffynnon, it was immediately obvious we were going to have a great time. There were barns and outhouses, apple trees, a patch of woods, and the cherry on top, a dead car in the front garden amongst the brambles. It was a paradise for feral children.
We wasted no time. Peter and I headed straight for the woods, where we quickly discovered some large holes leading into burrows. "Wow, big rabbits!" we thought. Later we'd find out they were actually badger setts. Not quite as cuddly. We never saw any badgers in the three years we lived in Trapp. We were too noisy and we didn't venture into the woods at night when they would have been active.
Lumberjacks in Training
For reasons known only to the fevered minds of small boys, we decided we were going to chop down a tree. Back at the barn, we unearthed a rusty old bow saw and set off to make our mark. We started ambitiously, with a fully grown tree, but after five minutes of futile sawing and exactly zero progress, we wisely downgraded to saplings.
Success! Sort of. We sawed through the first one and stood back, waiting for the glorious "Timberrrr!" moment. Nothing. The upper canopy of the woods was too dense, and its branches were tangled with its neighbours. Instead of crashing dramatically to the ground, the tree just dangled there like a sulking puppet. We chopped down another five or six, but the result was the same every time, no drama, no satisfying crash, just limp disappointment.
The Pine Tree Incident
Back in the yard, our sister Violet had discovered the pine tree and decided, in what was apparently a tribute to Olga Korbut, that she was going to climb it. Up she went, frock flapping in the breeze, while we stood nearby watching in anticipation of a fall. Mam came out at one point and asked where Violet was. "Dunno," we replied, carefully avoiding eye contact with the tree.
We reasoned that a nine-year-old girl climbing thirty or forty feet up a pine tree wasn't that dangerous. The branches were close together, almost like a natural ladder. What could go wrong?
Then she reached the top. And started swaying. Back and forth she went, causing the top of the tree to bend four or five feet in either direction, like a particularly reckless metronome. If she'd let go, she'd have been launched across the road and into the field like a human javelin.
Fortunately, at that moment my father stepped out of the house, saw the swaying, and let loose a stream of furious swearing. Violet scrambled down, completely unharmed. She didn't even get a clout. If it had been one of us boys, we wouldn't have been able to sit comfortably for a week.
Vi always got away with murder.
No More Tree-Climbing (Sort Of)
To put an end to the pine tree gymnastics, my father grabbed the rusty bow saw and lopped off the lower branches, up to about nine feet off the ground.
Not that it mattered. We'd already discovered where the ladder was kept.