MY wife is a straight-talking kind of woman. She calls a spade a spade. But sometimes, she’s a bit too cutting...

I’ve spent the weekend cutting down a tree which had half blown over in last month’s gales. I started on Saturday afternoon, full of vim and vigour.

I pictured myself as Charles Ingles in The Little House on the Prairie as I went to work with my trusty axe. I always think there’s something heroic about a man wielding a chopper and I felt a sense of satisfaction surge through me as one last blow sent the old fir tree crashing to the ground in the back garden.

I spent the rest of Saturday burning the branches and chopping the trunk into logs for the fire come next winter. It was hard work. I had the beginning of calluses on my hands but, hey, Mrs Ingles would have been proud of her man.

On Sunday morning, I set to work on getting the tree stump out of the ground. I dug around it with my spade and took my axe to the roots.

The sweat made my shirt cling to my back, but I kept on going: thwack, thwack, thwack.

It was proving to be harder to get out of the ground than it is to get our youngest out of bed before midday, but I refused to let it beat me. I paused for Sunday lunch, then went straight back to it.

“How much longer do you think you’ll be?” asked my wife.

“Only half an hour or so – I’m nearly there,” I replied, confidently.

Four hours later, I was still at it.

I’d chop away at the base of the stump for half an hour, then dig a bit deeper. Each time I dug, I found another root that needed severing.

I should point out at this juncture that at no stage in the 12 hours or so I’d been working as a lumberjack did anyone come out into the garden to bring me a cold beer.

All the vim and vigour of Saturday afternoon had evaporated. I had grown to hate that tree stump with a passion. I’m ashamed to say I called it some very rude names and I had blisters on top of the calluses.

As the light began to fade, I felt I was almost there. I was standing in a hole big enough to bury an elephant and I’d hacked the stump down to the point at which it surely had to come out.

I dropped the axe and dug underneath the stump one last time. I felt it start to give way and my heart gave a little dance of joy. One more heave should do it, I thought to myself, and I leaned on the handle of the spade to lever out my arch enemy.

It was at that precise moment that two things happened: My wife finally appeared with a bottle of beer – and the spade snapped.

“Well, that’s just typical,” she said, as I stood there holding a wooden spade handle.”That’s the only spade we’ve got,” she added.

I felt like lying down in the hole and covering myself with soil – but I didn’t have a spade.

The things they say

AT a meeting of Unison Retired Members in Middlesbrough, treasurer Colin Bage reflected on the difference between the questions kids ask mums and and dads.

Questions children ask mums: “What’s for tea?” “Have you seen my phone?” “Can I go and play with my friends?” “Can I have a drink?”

Questions children ask dads: “Dad, where’s mum?”

BARBARA Brown was helping out at a youth club “over the border”

in Middlesbrough and the youngsters had been taken on a weekend away to Stainsacre Hall, near Whitby.

When it came to tea-time, cutlery was laid out on the table and a little boy picked up his fork and said: “How are ya supposed to eat custard with this?”

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