Rootin
I was talking to a farmer one day. The conversation went from one thing to another, the usual small talk about the weather, jobs that had to be done around the farm, the yard and slatted house had to be power hosed, still a bit more silage to be made.
‘Ah just rootin’ he exclaimed at the end of it all.
‘Rootin is right,’ I thought to myself afterwards. Don’t we all indulge from time to time? Starting a job, then a different job, and another one after that, never getting any of them finished.
And everyone all over the world is at it. Farmers, people in towns and cities behind the boundary fences of their back gardens. Men women and children, in India, Namibia, North and South Yeman, parts of Germany, China and Japan, boyos in North Korea all busy Rootin.
Maybe farmers do it better than most. Seven days a week, Sundays and Mondays and Church and Bank Holidays. Myself and the family would be coming home from somewhere on a Sunday evening in our good clothes, and there’d be your man coming out of a guttery gap on an old clapped out Massey, belching out toxic fumes that would punch holes in the ozone. There’s a wrapped bale, wrapper dragging behind the tractor on the ground. Lumps of clay and muck on the road and its nearly dark but the lights don’t work…Rootin
Lyrics
Rootin
Busy on a Monday….same as on a Sunday...Rootin
Hasn’t shaved in a week…never showers at all..rootin
The kitchen is a kip last week’s dishes are piled dirty on the table
Never took time to marry or ask a woman out to lunch… rootin.
Chorus
Car won’t start……battery’s dead flat
Cattles broke out there’s a hole in the gap
Fences falling down, roofs are caving in. he’ll never be a day better.
Just rootin.
Always late for church he’ll be late for his own funeral cause he’ll be …rootin
Got a wedding invitation, said I cant go I’m busy ..rootin
He wasn’t feeling too well, should have went to the doctor but he was rootin
On the longest summers day, or a frosty Christmas morning you’ll see him rootin
Chorus
Car won’t start……battery’s dead flat
Cattles broke out there’s a hole in the gap
Fences falling down, roofs are caving in he still has his first communion money
Rootin.
God looked down from his heavenly perch, at everybody rootin
Wiped his brow and gave out a loud moan to see so many rootin.
Consulted with St Peter, got advice from St Paul, said what we gonna do
Ah just let them be, let them carry on for another while, keep on rootin.
Chorus
Car won’t start……battery’s dead flat
Cattles broke out there’s a hole in the gap
Fences falling down, roofs are caving in he could hoard mice at a crossroads
rootin.
Chorus
Car won’t start……battery’s dead flat
Cattles broke out there’s a hole in the gap
Fences falling down, roofs are caving in he wouldn’t take time to watch an All Ireland Final cause he’d be ..rootin
rootin.
I saw him the other day he was wheelin daylight into a dark corner
I saw him the other day, he was standing for hours and hours looking at cattle
He told me the other day, his shaggy auld dog had gone off on a ramatac, a ramatac, a ramatac a ramatac a ramatac
Chorus