Wyn Drabble: I hate having stacks of hard work

There is one around-the-house job I detest more than anything else. Yes, even more than falling from the ladder.
The job is stacking firewood.
Three cords of the stuff. From out on the driveway, through the back gate, across an area of lawn and into its resting place under a wide veranda to protect it from the winter rains.
It's not that I dislike the cosy glow of a fire.
Quite the opposite. It's the stacking of the fuel that gets my goat. Let's look at why.
First, it's the mindless repetitive nature of the task.
If you did it in one go it would be a whole day of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But it seldom happens that way.
It is generally done in small "bites" over a longer period. One has to mind one's back.
And it's all done a few pieces at a time.
For large pieces it might be two at a time, one per hand. For smaller hunks, a few can be stacked waiter-style up one arm. If small enough and light enough, five or six pieces can be carried this way.
Don't feed me the wheelbarrow option. That involves double-handling. Besides, the tyre is flat.
Then there's the Murphy's Law of wood piles - no matter how much you carry, how much you stack, the pile dumped on your driveway looks exactly the same size.
You can do an hour's stacking, then, when you sit down for a break with a cup of tea and gaze at the pile, it is still the same size.
It is always the same size.
There's the spider danger too. Whitetails, it seems, favour wood piles.
So do cockroaches but they don't bite. Well, not hard anyway.
During yesterday's bout of stacking, I noticed a number of spiders.
Many, at the sight of my approaching hand, scurried away into little holes to hide but there is the ever-present threat of an arachnid lurking on the underside of the piece you are about to grab.
Don't give me the "only a little spider" line.
I know what one of those little critters can do, as several hours spent in outpatients will attest.
So, when I see a spider, I check to see whether it has a white tail.
In fact, anything that moves gets my close scrutiny. Slaters have had their bums examined for signs of white.
Even tiny bits of bark get the once over. You can't be too careful, you know.
Then there is the danger to fingernails.
As a guitarist, I need the nails on my right hand and one carelessly clutched piece of wood can put paid to a lovingly cared-for fingernail.
Even gloves don't offer protection from this.
As I type this, I can see, just outside the window, the four rows of macrocarpa stacked so far. They come up to window height.
I can't begin to imagine the insect life that will thrive in that environment, though I know many of the tiny critters will have their life cut short by intense heat over the coming months.
Our resident blackbird likes to come and poop on the pile just outside the window.
It poops while it chats to me through the window and its deposits leave a not unattractive "frosting" over the top layer.
I am not making this next bit up. Said blackbird, as I wrote about it, came and landed right in front of me.
It is little more than a metre away and staring me straight in the face.
I am talking to it as I type, using an internationally accepted avian tongue that I have no time to explain here.
I'm not making up this next bit either. As soon as the bird took off, its place - but closer than the bird had been - was taken by two mice. They're probably planning a new home.
What I can't see from this typing position is the pile of wood still to be stacked.
It may be out of sight but it's certainly not out of mind.
Oh well, one or two more "bites" should see it shifted.
When that's done, I can get on with something more pleasurable - like dusting the gravel perhaps.
Or falling from the ladder.
Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, public speaker and musician.