I managed to whipper snipper my leg the other day and it wasn't pretty.
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Not as ugly as events in the Ukraine, obviously, or the floods up the east coast. Not even close.
But perhaps a distraction in what has been an unrelenting week of bleakness.
And here's hoping the sun shines brightly on us all soon.
Like many disasters, there were warnings this might happen.
Particularly when you're holding a whipper snipper in one hand.
And trying to push back reluctant garden flora with the other.
The poorly conceived plan for one-handed decimation came about thus.
Elusive grass was growing under an abrasive, hard-to-whipper-snip-past piece of viney-thing.
Rather than use two hands I thought I'd hold back the viney thing with one hand, whip snip with the other. Great plan.
Body and one arm physically wedging back the plant.
Other arm and hand extended with whipper snipper in a, some might say, doomed garden selfie stance.
Looking back, I really went out of my way to achieve resultant carnage.
Definitely a less than best safety grip, but that's whipper snippering for you.
Particularly when you've waged a losing battle all afternoon with the string head trying to get it to wind on properly and then deploy. And you've long dropped your lolly because it won't.
But that's whipper snippering for you too.
A case of Man v Machine v Mother Nature.
Only two possible winners there, unless your money's on human error.
Even before I tore my body up with the whippersnipper, the viney-thing I was trying to hold back was cutting my hand. So, yeah, everyone was having fun at that stage.
But I should have been more concerned with that enemy of human flesh in the other hand.
With predictable, time-stood-still ease, as soon as the heavy whipper snipper passed the threshold of "I told you so", as described by my straining outstretched arm and fingers, the business end of the whippersnipper pendulum-ed in.
Past the target grass and into the tissue paper that is my inner calf epidermis.
Interesting what a whipper snipper will do to that area of your leg if you give it some throttle.
Not quite the audio you get when you whipper snip mince, but close.
Reasonably muffled, actually, as the machine, and it's operator, choked on variations of alarm.
But the visuals proved pretty interesting.
Straight out of a Gardening Australia horror movie.
Or a scene from Carrie.
The call went out quickly for a medic, if not a bandaid, but the sympathy factor was pretty low.
You did what? How? Why?!!
And in that moment I struggled for answers. A bit like how everything seems to be this week.