1031. Sickle

Last week I was clearing the weeds and long grass along the roadside in front of my house. Would you believe? The weed-eater ran out of fuel just when there was only a little bit left to do.

In my shed there was an old sickle, one from the old days, wedged between the wall and the dwang.  I’d never used it before, and although it was a bit rusted and blunt, I thought it would do the trick.

So I’m out there cutting the grass on the side of the road, and this car stops. It’s an old man. He gets out and he says, “Son, don’t you know how to use a sickle properly?” And I said “Of course I know how to use a sickle properly.”

He takes the sickle off me and starts cutting the grass with it, with a sweeping motion away from his body, and not towards his body like I’d been doing. “You’ll do yourself some damage,” he said, “if you don’t use it properly.”

He then gets into his car and drives off. These know-alls drive me nuts. They go around sticking their noses into everyone else’s business. It really pisses me off. So I kept doing it my way because his way didn’t work properly and the old guy with a carrot up his bum annoyed the hell out of me. I could get really stuck into the grass cutting doing it my way. It was a lot faster.

Anyway, as I say, that was last week. The doctors are still not sure if they’ll have to amputate my left leg below the knee.