Once upon a time, on the edge of a vineyard in deepest South West France, there lived a middle aged couple. The man had had an accident and was unable to do much for a while, so his wife did her best to tackle the jobs normally done by her husband, as well as those neither of them would normally need to do. She’d perfected the art of dragging the wheelchair in and out of the car and had become fairly proficient at lighting fires, drilling beams and using the electric chainsaw to cut wood, though being unacustomed to such heavy work, she had aches and pains where she hadn’t previously realised she had muscles.

One day, she even found time to prune the blackcurrant bushes, once she’d managed to find them, that is; the weed fairies had visited and the blackcurrant bushes were completely overgrown with grass and weeds, which really needed strimming. Her kindly husband had generously bought her a strimmer of her own a couple of years before; she’d never quite got the hang of starting it, but felt that it couldn’t really be that difficult – could it?

Our brave (OK, stubborn, determined) heroine filled it with fuel, primed the pump, turned the choke on and pulled the cord as hard as she was able; but the bad strimmer fairies had bewitched it and nothing happened. She tried again, and again, and again……… until she felt her arm and shoulder would fall off. So that’s how hard it could be then. When she had no pull left, she gave up in disgust. Why couldn’t they make strimmers (or chainsaws, or hedge trimmers, or any of those other boy-toys for that matter), easy, or even possible to start? Would she really have to resort to cutting the grass with shears?

The following day, a knight in shining armour came riding by, in the shape of Lord Kieran of Dax; he split logs for the fire and stacked them on the terrace, frightened off the bad fairies and showed the woman how to start the strimmer. Then he turned it off and made her do it herself; well, he tried. Once he’d started it several times and it was warmed up, she was able to start it, but that probably won’t help when it’s cold and Lord Kieran’s not around; still, she was able to cut the grass around the blackcurrants, so perhaps they can live happily ever after, for a while at least.