Woodpeckers And Painkillers

It’s Christmas Eve and I’ve always associated woodpeckers with hangovers, or more precisely, headaches. Back in the 1970’s there was an advert on TV for Woodpecker cider. I have no recollection of the visuals, but the words accompanying jingle went something like: “when the woodpecker knocks be sure to let him in, because the woodpecker knows: cider goes with everything”.

Thick heads. Thick trees. What’s the point of ascending a thick tree with a tripod? What are the chances, once you’re up there, of finding three branches spread in a formation that’d accommodate the spread of the tripod’s legs?

And say you do find the branches agreeable - get your tripod up; imagine the struggle it'd be to take a photograph using an old wooden glass-plate view camera? You (at high-altitude) have to put your head under a dark-cloth, plunge yourself into total darkness, and to top it all, as soon as you try to focus; the ground glass screen turns everything (your whole world) upside-down!

When everything's topsy-turvy, when I can’t see the trees for wood and the hairdryer’s no comfort anymore: I put on my fireman’s hat (stolen), don a suit and tie (a tie decorated with woodpeckers), load the suit-pockets with painkillers, go out and climb a tree - a tree inhabited by a woodpecker. I climb up high to his hole (open door), and as there’s nothing to knock, I pour: pour paracetamols into my mouth. If at this point I were to fall, it’d look like suicide, so I steady myself and spit – spit the tablets into the woodpecker’s hole; flood the home – overdose the house – medicate the menagerie. And if anyone happens on by and looks up to see what I’m at - I chant:

Painkillers for the woodpecker,

For the splitting headaches he must get.

I’m neither, fireman or vertical-golfer,

No need to run for the vet.

As I normally have a mouthful of tablets, these lines often go misunderstood. I’ve forgotten to mention, when I look down on these nosy-parkers, I’m wearing an eye-mask improvised out of paracetamol packaging – made from the foil and plastic wrapping you pop the pills out of. I can see through the holes of the popped-out pills. This DIY mask helps me focus my mouth-to-hole (orifice-to-orifice) aim – like a sniper.

If you can’t call on a woodpecker this Christmas, why not try crumbling a few paracetamols on the bird-table? make his headachy Christmas, a white Christmas: You’ve got a hangover? Think of the woodpecker!