I spent the summer of 2005 leading international volunteers round Carmarthenshire, regenerating footpaths. One of the tasks we’d do was to build stiles, and in places, to do that, we had to remove old stiles. On one morning, while doing just that - removing a rotten old stile. I was wielding a claw hammer; the type you might use to carefully lever out nails, or thump nails into wood. In this instance, however I’d decided that a claw hammer was actually an appropriate tool to create some destruction with. Avoiding all of the health and safety advice i was responsible for giving, I tried using the claw to try to break part of the step by thwarking it hard against the wood. Unfortunately for my shin, as I brought the hammer down with a furious swipe, the wood gave way slightly, deflecting one of the claws straight smack bang wallop into my favourite right shin - the right shin in my right leg, about 3 inches below my knee. You could say I’d successfully achieved my destructive ambitions. the stile was a lot easier for everyone else to remove after my heroics, however it had rendered me somewhat incapable of walking. I feel pretty darn lucky, as although I managed to dent my shinbone, I somehow avoided anything worse than gauging a hole in my flesh. I’ll level with you, I felt very queasy and had to sit down for quite a while, like in excess of probably a few hours at least. I did manage to hobble up a hill later that day, from where I watched a red kite playing catch and drop and catch and drop with a small rodent, while counting my blessings.
