A cut above the rest
15th February, 2008

Steve is a big bloke, the sort of man who can carry a carton of stubbies and a brand new lawn trimmer, still in its box, under each arm. The stubbies were lacking as he walked up the street, toting a lawn trimmer in each hand like twin six-shooters, but he looked like a man who needed a drink.      "Here," he said, holding out one of the boxes. "It's yours." If I had tried to take it with one hand I would have dropped it on my feet so I extended both arms and clutched it to my chest.      "Why are you giving this to me?" I asked, for I was in the middle of cutting the lawn and had been using a weed snipper not an hour before.      "My brushcutter broke so I asked if I could borrow yours. You were around the back with the mower when I borrowed it," he said.      "And?" I queried further.      "I don't understand it. It just disintegrated," he said, shaking his head. "I completely lost it, man." His nostrils flared and brow creased at the memory of his mental meltdown. "So I went straight out and bought two new ones. One's for you."      "I'll give you the money," I said, guilt coursing through my veins like molten metal.      "Forget it," he said. "I broke it, so I replace it. Them's the rules. It's just not my day." With a sigh and head bowed, the big man walked back down the street with the remaining new weed snipper, still boxed, dangling from one hand. "Actually, it was a little bit broken before you borrowed it," I said in a very soft voice designed not to carry for more than a few metres down the street, so my words fell well short of Steve's earshot. Some weeks before, in attempting to fit a new cutting cord to the snipper - a chore that for me rates in difficulty alongside performing brain surgery on yourself with a penknife and a shaving mirror - I lost a bit. I didn't know what bit it was, I was merely aware that something had dropped out of its mechanical intestines and, search as I did, I was unable to find it. So I put the rest of the bits back in but it was obvious there was something amiss. When I started it the whole thing vibrated like a washing machine in spin-dry mode into which someone has placed a bag of cement. Apart from the vibration, the snipper had also developed the habit of spewing forth metres of nylon cutting line that would than wrap itself around me like a web of green spaghetti, a further indication that, whipper-wise, all was not well. My uncle, as I wrote a few weeks ago, had recently experienced a similar phenomenon and I wondered if a family trend was beginning to emerge here. My strategy had been to keep using it until it imploded and then loudly denounce cheap, shoddy, 21st-century workmanship, storm off and make a hero of myself by buying a new one.      "What's that?" asked my wife as I walked up the drive with the still-boxed snipper.      "Steve broke ours so he bought us a new one," I said, smiling.      "How could Steve break ours? He's the most mechanically competent person I've ever met. He doesn't break things. You break things. Steve fixes things," she said, arching an eyebrow.      "They just don't make things like they used to," I said, shrugging my shoulders philosophically before restarting the mower to gag any further debate. She eyed me suspiciously before turning on her heel and retreating indoors. My conscience is now killing me. I have to repay Steve the money without confessing all, but my usual ability to find the coward's way out has temporarily deserted me.

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