Hamish McShanks

Hamish McShanks Secret Diary w/e 11^th June 2006

You may remember I have been doing some gardening recently. I say gardening when ‘lumber jacking’ would be nearer the mark. Some poor deluded fool had planted a number of trees in my back garden. Not recently obviously, I’m not referring to a phantom tree planter or anything. I didn’t wake up one morning and find an avenue of Elm trees in my back garden. What I mean is a previous owner had clearly though that a few trees might brighten up the garden. He was wrong. They might have looked cute twenty years ago but the resulting dense forest was now cutting out all the light.

After several weeks of blood, sweat and tears I’d managed to hack down a number of the smaller trees with my Swiss army knife. But I have to say I was getting rather fed up and the saw blade was now practically smooth. It was only after a long moaning rant to a work colleague about the inefficiencies of tree felling using that thing that’s supposed to take stones out of horses’ hooves that he mentioned he owned an electric chainsaw. ‘Do you want to borrow it?’ he enquired as I stood with my mouth open ‘it’s really good, and awfully awfully fast’ I quickly suppressed the murderous look that flooded across my face and replaced it with my ‘I don’t really want to fillet you with my stone remover you complete bastard’ face. ‘That would be very kind, thank you’ I replied while forcing my knife hand back into my pocket.

Having procured said chainsaw I thought it might be prudent to have a butchers at the instructions before plugging it in ‘Okay Ham what’s the scores on the doors then’ First impressions were not good. Most of the opening pages were filled with graphic diagrams of how to chop your extremities off. As there were big red crosses across each one of these gory illustrations I assumed this was the kind of behaviour to avoid. I did wonder why diagrams were necessary rather than a simple written warning? I mean pictures are lovely if you’re learning ‘The Cat Sat on the Mat’. By all means have pictures of various felines on an assortment of rugs. But if you can’t read it’s probably a gimmie that you shouldn’t be operating a chainsaw! Or am I being too right wing?

Actually it’s probably a good thing; a picture does say a thousand words after all. In this case most of the words appeared to be ‘Aaaarrrgh sweet Jesus I’ve cut my leg off aaargh’ followed by a quick burbling death. It does stick in the mind though; it would be too easy to miss that if you were reading a checklist. ‘One ensure plug is properly wired, blah blah blah, Two top up chain oil every blah, Three don’t cut off limbs blah blah’. So I take it all back, I’ve talked myself round. Diagrams are a great idea, real pictures of actual victims would be even better. In fact photographs of the grieving next of kin gathered round the grave side would definitely drive the point home!

Aaaaanyway, other than adding a bit of oil and making sure the chain was tightened every ten minutes it seemed a case of ‘plug and play’. Bing bang bosh, the trees are history. Smiling broadly I tossed my penknife into the bucket, picked the chainsaw out of the box and strode purposely out into the garden.

I was whistling happily whilst I gradually unwound the extension cord setting it down at the nearest tree. It was all very quiet; the normal cacophony of forest noise was noticeable by its absence. Clearly the sight of the chainsaw had convinced all the furry and feathered woodland creatures to pick up sticks and mosey on out of town. The trees, sadly, did not have that option.

‘Alright boys? Nice night isn’t it?’ They seemed closer together, I didn’t think trees could huddle but they were certainly trying ‘Ooookay just put on my safety goggles’ I popped on my sunglasses ‘now my ear defenders’ Inserting a headphone in each ear I flicked on my MP3 player and ‘Born to be Wild’ blared directly into my head at 100 decibels ‘Oh yeah Booooorn to be wiiiieeeeeld!’

Flicking the safety catch off I fired up the chainsaw. Even the sound of Steppenwolf thrashing their guitars couldn’t drown out the buzz of electric chained death. Laughing manically I approached the first tree ‘Get your motor running’ I screamed as the first blow scythed through a low branch ‘head out ooooon the highway’ another bough bit the dust ‘looking for adventure’ bzzzz bzzzz thump! ‘and whatever comes our waaaaay’ bzzz bzzzz bzzzzz crash! ‘yeeeah darlin go make it happen, take the world in a love embrace’ bzzzz bzzzz BZZZZ! Fuelled by sixties rock and emboldened by the speed I was working my way through the forest I aimed at larger and larger branches.

‘I like smoke and lightening, heavy metal thuuuundaaaaa’ my MP3 was at maximum volume and the wax in my ears was turning runny, but I didn’t care. I was a whirling chained dervish. There was going to be nary a tree standing when I was finished ‘Like a true natures child, we were born, born to be wild!’, ‘we can climb so high, I never wanna diiiiiiiiiiiie! Born to be Wiiiiiiiiild!’

It’s a shame the safety diagrams didn’t have an image of a baldy man wearing an MP3 player along side an exaggerated representation of a clock. I was so engrossed in the music that twenty minutes had passed. I should have been on my second ‘chain tension’ check by now ‘BORN TO BE WIIIII… ooooaaaAAARGGGHHHOOOMMPFF!

The slack chain embedded itself into the tree. Not good I think you’ll agree. Worse still was the stored energy had to go somewhere? As the chain was now stationary the only thing left to move was the rest of the saw. That would be the bit I was holding on to. Rumour has it the professional wrestling term for what resulted is called ‘A Slingshot Catapult’.

The correct nomenclature was not high on my list of priorities as I slid down the tree trunk and into a mangled burbling heap. My fractured and twisted sunglasses lay by my side as I drifted into unconsciousness no longer wishing to ‘take the world in a love embrace’ preferring to wish instead for the sight of a paramedic and a neck brace.

Doei