The Quest to Build a Bridge

After Christmas, there's a grace period where you are allowed to exist in a food coma. Not in my family. My mother and uncle decided we were going to build a bridge. They got very excited. They did not seem to notice how we all became more like caricatures of  sullen teenagers than actual people.

We could not crush the excitement of my mother and uncle. They were filled with such glee at the thought of trekking across the countryside to rebuild their childhood bridge.

We went along with it. We assembled a motley crew. Our team resembled something closer to all the people that would die in any horror movie, ever, than an actual group of people that could build anything in real life. After my uncle (who actually does build things and therefore is the only person that should have technically been there), my teenage brother was the next most suitable person for the task at hand.

He is remarkably good at being strong since he hit puberty. Before that we were able to beat him up. After that, in terms of usefulness, is my Mother and then my youngest Sister. My youngest sister thinks that because she used to be able to beat my brother up - she is stronger than him. She spends all her time, trying to prove this. Even though he has all the muscle, she still manages to do impressively manly things out of sheer determination.

After that we are all pretty much terrible at bridge building and would be the people that would die first, if this was an actual horror story. This is not a horror story. We lived through the entire debacle and nobody was even a little bit harmed. The rest of our crew, in no particular order, looked like this:

 

My family knows the importance of having a full cast for all adventure stories. So we also brought along a dog, because that's what happens in all the Famous Five novels.

Before we could set out, it became clear that some of us were inappropriately dressed. We were promptly given old giant clothes from the pits of my Grandmother's house. We looked ravishing.

My uncle then took out the bridge-building tools. All of the tools looked excessively dangerous.

I was given a giant harmful scissor thing and informed it could chop my fingers off.

We set off on the path to the spot where we were going to build the bridge. A normal person would assume that you would build a bridge in a place where it is useful, a place where people generally go for a stroll and might want to cross it and check out the other side. For as long as I've lived, that has been my assumption. So you can imagine my surprise when the path to the bridge was about a mile of scrub, bog, brambles and death traps.

It wasn't a relentless trek, we took a few heart-warming pit stops to hear the history of our surroundings. This included things like a tree where rebels were hung by the English, back in the day.

The journey continued with us traversing countless fences. This resulted in most of us crawling between the barbed wire like small defeated animals.

And an unspoken-fence-clearing competition between my two youngest siblings.

It wasn't long before some of us got left behind. We struggled on, as our parents skipped ahead with unsuppressed joy.

We did eventually catch-up. Not through any athletic prowess on our end, but because it soon became clear that the others were lost.

We trekked and trekked. We fell in puddles, we snagged our clothes, we got very grumpy and our parents were worse. They pretended like we weren't even lost. Everywhere we looked there were reeds and bog. Eventually my uncle decided we were there, even though it looked the exact same as everywhere else we had been.

So we set about dispersing the tools. There were only enough tools for about four people, rendering the rest of us useless. We were going to take turns sawing down the trees. I began fantasising about the bridge we were going to build. My dream bridge was a bit unrealistic.

I knew this was highly unlikely. I imagined what the bridge would look like in the worst case scenario.

Once we started the process, and I saw some of the techniques being implemented, I realised even my worst case scenario bridge wasn't going to happen.

I watched as my brother became a cross between a violent murderer and a chipmunk.

At one point my uncle sensed my wavering enthusiasm and offered me the saw. I reluctantly attempted to saw a bit of the tree.

I was terrible. My Women's-yoga-pants-wearing cousin soon took the saw away from me. He was much more efficient.

After the trees were knocked down, we pared them down and started moving them into position. My sister was not as good at straddling trees or wielding an axe as my brother, so she still had quite a bit to prove. She did so by picking up and moving an entire tree, all by herself.

To put this in perspective, this is how we moved the other trees.

My Uncle then started the engineering of the bridge. This involved standing the tree up and allowing it to fall onto the other side.

Once the bridge was engineered, we stepped back to admire our handy work. It was decided, by the sane amongst us, that we would only cross the bridge in an emergency, and if we were to cross it, we would most certainly be crawling.

Running to HELL, Humiliation and Public Disgrace

About two years ago, I got all my wisdom teeth pulled out. A normal person would stay in bed and eat icecream. I am not a normal person. Instead, I decided to run a 10km obstacle race, because in my antibiotic addled mind - my team needed me.

My team wasn't some sort of county or club team. This was a smattering of work colleagues running a silly obstacle course for the laugh. I was not doing it for the laugh. I had been trained to race. I was taking the whole thing, wisdom teeth or no wisdom teeth, very seriously indeed.

Upon arrival at the race, I realised this was very different from my usual sort of event. There was nobody emaciated sprinting past, there were no impossible looking warm ups and literally nobody was dressed properly for running fast.

Everywhere I turned, there were women more concerned with taking selfies than how tightly their shoes were tied.

I decided to do my usual dynamic warm-up.

Given the lacklustre attempts of my competitors, I started to build a false sense of confidence. As I did weird Swedish skips to intimidate the masses, I forgot all about my antibiotics and the fact that I rarely race over 2 miles. I didn't think about the numerous obstacles that had earned this race its ridiculous title. During my intimidating warm-up, I was 100% sure I would beat everybody.

I looked pityingly at the gym bunnies and couch to 5k runners in my midst. They had no idea what I was capable of.

My false sense of confidence lasted exactly 50 metres into the race. At this point we had to plunge into a freezing cold pond. It was January in Ireland. The water was the exact temperature I imagine death feels like. I watched as my competitors splashed about and laughed.

I emerged from the pond, shivering from head to toe. I was not wearing enough clothing. We kept running. I could not get warm. I was so cold that even the smallest, most pathetic obstacles seemed to be heralding my doom.

They made us run up mountains...

Scale tyres...

It was after crawling through several tyres like a small defeated baby that I realised I was in a bad way. I could no longer feel my legs. I was shivering uncontrollably and I had started to fantasise about blankets.

I tried asking a course marshal to save me. I ran up to him and said "blaaaaa". He probably thought I was crazy, but I could not remember any real words. He pointed to the next obstacle - a bag of cement that I was supposed to run up a hill with. I'm not proud of it. I wept. There was then the longest 100 metres of my life dragging the bag because I could not get it off the ground. My competitors sprinted past with their cement bags tossed casually over their shoulders. One lovely gentleman did assist me in my hour of need, or I would probably still be there.

Things only got worse. There was a 5 minute crawl under barbed wire, where I was subjected to the most questionable chat-up attempt by a man who was crawling beside me in the mud. I was sprawled in muck, weeping and cursing under my breath. I was too defeated to pretend to be flattered.

None of this was as bad as THE WALL. This was designed to stop all short people progressing without help. I do not enjoy asking for help. I also have the upper body strength of a toddler. I clutched the wall and shivered in vain.

Eventually someone took pity on the stubborn girl weeping alone at the bottom of the wall and gave me a boost.

Once on the wall, I did not feel the need to get down. I was happy there. It was comfy.

In the end someone shoved me, and I rolled in the air, before plummeting to the floor. Where I lay and wondered what terrible thing I had done to deserve this Hellish experience.

I could not understand the people around me. They were revelling in the mud and misery. Did they not know that you could run without all this ridiculous hardship?

I would like to say that I gathered my dignity. That I harnessed some part of my athletic training and used it in those final metres, but no. What happened was much more embarrassing. I had lost all feeling in my legs and by some strange miracle could only crawl.

I was 100% focused on crawling as fast as I could to the finish line, where I knew there'd be big, tall, strong people to carry me to safety.

My arms were blue, I didn't know where I was and I wasn't even sure I had legs anymore, but I knew as soon as I saw him that he was the man to save me. Standing just past the finish line was the tallest man I'd ever seen. I don't even know if he was a course marshal. I do know that I was delirious with exhaustion and in that moment it was only his height that mattered.

 The last thing I remember is throwing myself at his feet.

And then, safe in the knowledge that I had found a strong enough man to carry me to safety, I passed out.