PANTSPA PRESENT
As always at this time of year, I have been ask asked to recommend Christmas presents for kee keen gardeners. Whilst I prefer not to acknowledge Christmas until around December 20, I appreciate others like to plan further in advance. So I’m happy to help, and my first suggestion is for the person who has absolutely everything … but won’t have these. Squirrel underpants. And listed on the Internet as ‘Genuine Squirrel Underpants. 9” Waist White Cotton Jockey-Type Drawers with an Elastic Waist’. Even more bizarrely, I checked a well-known site to see if they actually existed and there are only four left in stock – plus the product has 54 global ratings earning it 4.8 (out of 5) 5* reviews.
This year just continues to get more and more weird.
SAW POINT
Whilst using a chainsaw in work a few weeks ago someone asked if we knew why the chainsaw had been invented. ‘To cut wood’ was the unanimous answer but they had recently read something quite different – and ‘unguessable’.
Don’t read on if you are squeamish, but apparently the chainsaw was originally invented to assist childbirth. If a baby was breech or just ‘chunky’, and before the C-section was commonplace, removal of the pelvic bone and cartilage was deemed necessary in order to deliver the baby.
During the 1780s, two doctors named John Aitken and James Jeffray, invented the chainsaw in order to make the removal of the bone and cartilage easier. Bless them – so considerate!
Their invention was much smaller than the wood cutting device we are familiar with today and went on to be used for other bone cutting operations and amputations until medical advances saw it phased out.
I am proud of my City & Guilds NPTC Certificate of Competence in Chainsaw Operations but to be honest, I have left my chainsaw in the shed throughout the menopause, as brain fog and mood swings are not an ideal combination with a chainsaw. I probably would have managed to cut myself just fuelling it up.
Bizarrely, if you use a chainsaw in your profession you have to have a Chainsaw Certificate, but a member of the public can go and buy one and use it in their own garden without any instruction at all. Personally, menopausal or not, I would highly recommend doing a course if you are going to be using a chainsaw at all. For example, the Lantra Awards Occasional User Programme is perfect for people who are not making a career with their chainsaw but want to work safely and efficiently.