The way I look at it is this: the world's a jigsaw and people are all comical items in it. Here's Joey Block down at Ardrum with his wife Bernadette and four children - three boys at home and the girl, she's married in Cork as well as, at the last count, eleven cats, four dogs, Minnie the goat and Alfie the sheep. Here's small Joey on his patch where he's reared his family these thirty-two years - how I got here, that's a fairy tale - third-generation woodcutter, Joey works on his patch of ground, keeping away quiet and original, when the big guys attack!

He lets the word rest, he lets it travel around his land, his trees, his sheds, his ma- chines, down the lane he picked and shovelled himself in 1958.

And listen to me here, d'you know what I said to the big guys? I said, you come in here with your machines and you'll have to mow through the six of us. And I went to the priest and I said: You've got room for six coffins in here, haven't you? The family's reared and Joey's going nowhere. I said to the big guys, you're not just taking on Joe Block, you're taking on a wife and family.

The big guys were trying to knock his trees, widen his stream; he was part of their scheme and they were not part of his. He took them to court; he called twenty-seven witnesses and would have brought in Minnie the goat; he spoke his own defence, and won - and he's proud.

If you had a man with the book-learning standing right here now and he saw the family that's grown now and the hill behind with that sun on it, would he say that Joe and his family should be moved on up the Tower road so the big guys can complete their scheme? He would not. And neither would the man up there. If there was a man up there. D'you believe in the man up there?

I'll tell you now how I came here. I came out with the wife and the wife's mother, just out in the car for a drive one Sunday in 1958. We stopped at the post office to buy - I can remember exactly what we bought - one of those chocolate things, and I asked was there any handy cottage about that was empty? The old fella in there said to go out the door and turn left then left again and up the lane - I told you it was a fairy tale - and in the end we were given the cottage with the bit of land - no paper, no signatures, no agreements. And we came in and reared the family. Thirty-two years. I fall the trees and I make the hurleys, and I don't want anything only to keep things going as they are.

Alfie! he calls to the sheep who's tied to a tree down the lane. Alfie! He usually answers. On the third call, Alfie does.