Today could go one of three ways.

I could do something creative. There are millions of unused words out there and I could knock some into shape and make a poem. That sounds like hard work. Obviously to the millions of people out there getting dusty or muddy or oily it doesn’t sound much like work, but it is.

Or I could wake Julia with a cup of tea and a kind word. If I want to live dangerously I could wake Julia and tell her I need breakfast . . .

Or I may just write more blog. It’s not demanding, and I can pretend it’s practice for poetry. Seems like a good idea. Certainly better than waking Julia before she is ready.

So, an acacia tree, as mentioned in the last post. It was about thirty feet tall, almost dead and sited between two neighbours. It was actually in the garden of the lady who lived behind my customer. The two of them were not happy with each other over various disputes and I was usually caught in the middle. My customer objected to the virtually dead tree hanging over her garden, and worried about something dropping off. The neighbour, who was usually very big on enforcing her rights, wasn’t quite so keen on fulfilling her obligations (ie spending money on getting a specialist to take it down)  and clearly had no intention about sorting things out.

Eventually, I told my customer that I would get rid of the offending branch and we would have to leave it at that. So out came the pruning saw and the extension pole. I couldn’t quite reach, so I unfolded my general purpose platform and stood on that. I could at that point stretch up and saw into the branch.

You may already have spotted the basic flaw in the plan. I was about to saw a fairly chunky branch that was directly overhead as I strained to reach it.  In order to get it done before the neighbour noticed I decided to get it all done in one cut. This was another problem. It would generally be bad for the tree too – you should really do this sort of thing with a couple of cuts to keep it all tidy, but as the tree was almost leafless and clearly failing I decided not to worry too much.

Anyway, I got sawing. It was a lovely sharp saw (until one of the kids used it to “help” me in the garden one day) and the cut went well. As it got to the final quarter I realised the weight of the branch was about to complete the job for me without waiting for the cutting to finish. That’s why I should have cut it into pieces and made two cuts for the final “cut”. I knew the theory, but the theory doesn’t allow for things like argumentative neighbours and wanting to get it done quickly.

It was round about that point that I realised the branch was falling, that I was balanced precariously and that my hard hat was still in the car.  It was about four feet long and 4-6″ in diameter.  And it was accelerating.

I’m not particularly quick or athletic, so jumping out of the way wasn’t an option, and I styled it out, bent backwards to avoid it hitting my head and casually diverted its fall by shoving it away with my left forearm.

It made quite a dent in the ground, and took about ten minutes for the feeling to return to my arm, at which point I wished it hadn’t bothered. Eventually it stopped hurting and I felt a great feeling of relief that it had all passed off so well. The notable thing about it was that for several weeks after the incident the scab on my arm kept casting out bits of bark which had forced there way in when it hit me.

And that is the story of an idiot with a pruning saw. It ranks up with the story about how I fell out of a pear tree and learnt to use my own ladders instead of trusting those provided by customers. However, enough of trees and stupidity for one day.

Trees are not your friend.