What a shock to the system it was to have to get up at 5am for work! However, once I had got dressed, had some breakfast and we were on the road, it felt really good to be up so early. There was not a lot of traffic although surprisingly more than in the UK at 5.40 in the morning.
It took us half an hour to get to the yard and once there, as no one was gong to be in that could give me an induction, it was decided I would go and work with Mat for the day and also Dave.
The first job was pretty quick and easy. All we had to do was fell a small tree and chuck the wood on the truck. However, I didn’t have any gloves or long sleeves and had a few nasty shocks when my hand felt something slimy that turned out to be a big fat slug. By the time we had finished I was very dirty and felt a stinging on my arms. I didn’t think anything of it until Dave heard me mention it and said “Oh yeah, that’ll be the stinging caterpillars”. I must have squashed one or two against my arm as I had been lifting the branches and they had come up as white patches of raised skin like when you get stung by stinging nettles. Dave said they were harmless and gave me some Stingose cream to put on. Within an hour I couldn’t even feel it – Cool though – my first war wound lol! (more…)
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