The Good Life
Is a disorderly workshop a sign of moral decrepitude?
Greg Dixon
How many chainsaws does one man need? After careful research – that would be me buying chainsaws at vast expense
– I am able to give you the definitive answer: three.
Three! How the hell does a clapped-out journalist living on just five hectares in the Wairarapa need three chainsaws? I’m glad you asked.
The first, purchased not long after we arrived at Lush Places, is the petrolpowered heavy-hitter of the trio, built to cut down trees, cut up logs and, if need be, behead zombies. The second, which I picked up in autumn, is what’s called a pole saw. This is a little battery-powered chainsaw on a pole for cutting things way above your head. It’s been tidying up some of our many tall trees.
The newest edition is another battery-powered number, a baby brother to the big petrol monster, which is going to be really handy for lopping the many low and wayward tree limbs in the orchard, and tidying up windfall wood. It was a must-have. At least, that’s what I told myself as I stood in line at Bunnings in Wellington waiting to pay $400 for the thing; I hope Greg wasn’t lying to Greg again.
Anyway, fibbing to myself in order to buy yet another power tool was the least of my problems when I got chainsaw No 3 home. As I stood in the garage staring at my workbench, shelves and storage cupboards, a sick feeling washed over me: there was nowhere to put it. My garage’s workshop was full.
Actually, it isn’t. It is simply disorganised. The bench, shelves and cupboards are an unholy clutter of garden tools, bottles of weed spray, jerry cans, tools, power tools, packets of screws and nails, power cords, bottles of solvent, safety gear and all manner of other odds and sods kept because “they might come in useful”.
I can mostly find what I’m looking for. But my garage’s work area is something like my mind: it has some useful stuff in it, but it’s also a bloody shambles. And it has become a source of guilt: my father raised me to be a better man, or to at least have a tidier workshop.
If I close my eyes and put my mind to it, I can still see the inside of all the ones he kept while I was growing up. Order ruled: tools were hung from hooks on the wall and had neat outlines drawn behind them so that he knew what tool went on what hook. Each type of screw or nail had its own glass screw-top jar with the tin top nailed to a shelf so that the jars hung down like a row of fairy lights. Everything had a place and was in its place, and the workbench was always clear.
It was a complete contrast to the only other shed I knew well as a child, my grandpapa’s garage in Lower Hutt. A tiny wooden affair, it was so full of stuff there was hardly room for his Hillman Minx. Like all good sheds, it smelled primal and possibly a bit dangerous. It was dark, dirty, cluttered and scary. I loved going in there.
Anyway, as I cleared space on my bench for Chainsaw No 3, I started to wonder what the state of a man’s shed says about the state of the man. I was vexed, so I asked Dad what he thought when he rang a week or so later to tell me he was off “to wear a budgie smuggler” on a Gold Coast beach again. He is 82. Dad was very firm. A man with a tidy shed was likely to be lawabiding and upstanding. A man with an untidy shed was likely to not be. “He’s the sort who’d go 50 in a 30km/h zone.” It was, he seemed to be saying, a matter of virtue. Which makes him much the better man, I said. He let me off lightly: “You have other strengths.” My laugh may have been as loud as a chainsaw.
How the hell does a clappedout journalist living on just five hectares in the Wairarapa need three chainsaws?