BILLY SHEARS

Shock horror - my very own gleaming pair of razor sharp shears for shackling myself further and lower to the grovel yoke of yardwork.

Not sure how this happened - slip of a tongue or my usual incompetent timing - but I'm clearly heading for my own 'One Clipped over the Cuckoo's Nest' moment.

Some old pal will roll up with crates of Cristal and wodka in the boot and cartons of Gauloises tumbling out the window.

She'll ask directions to the Green Room but her gaze be directed to a jungular spot on the hillside where a rustic idiot can be seen hacking and clipping.

'Chris?,' she'll wonder, and give a wan wave.

I'll return a halting flap of an arm and, as I turn back to my toil, half my head will be seen to be shaved, à la Jack Nicholson in the 'Cuckoo' movie, and a nattily stitched scar running across my dome.

Horrid thought, that I'll have finally succumbed.