Hextol says a fond farewell to an old and trusty gardening friend

What started off as a few wispy twigs of spruce, laurel, leylandii and other nameless woody wonders developed into a monstrous barrier which requires whipping into some sort of shape every summer.

And my trusty ally in this one-sided battle with Mother Nature has always been the Black and Decker GT250 electric hedgecutter I purchased second hand from a Courant colleague more years ago than I care to remember.

It has seen me through many adventures, including being perched with me on top of a rickety stepladder, supposedly being secured by Mrs Hextol. However, when the seductive strains of the Emmerdale Farm theme tune drifted into the garden, she abandoned her post, and I was catapulted onto next door’s front lawn.

Originally, I used to trim the hedge with hand shears, but as it grew like Topsy, I finally had to accede to the unwanted advice from Granny Annie, an octogenarian from the Kingdom of Fife with an uncanny knack of stating the blindingly obvious, who repeated every few minutes: “What you need is an electrical hedge cutter!”

And so it came to pass that I acquired my clattering companion, and indeed, it accomplished more in the first 30 seconds than I had previously achieved in three hours’ snipping by hand.

However, in the 31st second, I contrived to cut through the wire of my new pride and joy, shorting out all the electrics in the house, and causing the soles of my trainers to get rather warm and issue little puffs of smoke.

It took an hour or so to find the fuse wire to get the electric back on, and then I had to rejoin the bits of wire I had severed with my clumsiness.

That accomplished, I gave the trigger an experimental pull to make sure the machine was working - and managed to cut through the flex again in a different place,

It was a scene that was repeated many times over the next number of years, and indeed, the original 10 metres of flex was down to about six and a half, and so it was this week, when I was three quarters through cutting the hedge, and the machine came to a halt.

I knew I hadn’t cut through the wire on this occasion, but I suspected all might not be well with a previous repair marked by many yards of red insulating tape.

Remembering for once to turn the power off at the mains, I unravelled the tape, and found that the wires had indeed come adrift.

With a sigh, I rejoined them for the umpteenth time, taped everything back together pulled the trigger - and nothing happened.

I knew I hadn’t fused the house electrics again, as Mrs Hextol was watching yet another Call the Midwife repeat, so I reasoned it must have been the fuse in the cutter itself.

I rummaged in the jar where we keep things we seldom need, like the radiator bleeding key, spare bulbs for the Christmas lights we no longer have, and the mysterious pink glasses cleaning goo we bought in Blackpool decades ago, and there miraculously was a pack of three amp fuses. Into the plug it went, and lo and behold, the machine burst into boisterous life again.

I set about the remaining section of hedge, but after some minutes realised that while the engine was buzzing away, there was no flurry of falling leaves.

Closer examination revealed that no matter how loudly the engine screamed, the blade was not moving.

I sprayed it with WD 40, banged it on the floor and poked it with a screwdriver, but the blade had moved its last.

I consulted a man who knows about such things, and he opined that the heavy work I had subjected the machine to over the past few decades had proved too much for the gearing system.

Getting it repaired would probably cost several times more than the machine was worth, so with heavy heart, it was consigned to the tip at Hexham along with the 10 bags of cuttings which were its last hurrah.

I have since been out and bought a brand new hedge cutter, which is more powerful, with a longer reach and many other mod cons.

I haven’t had the heart to use it yet though.