The Fixer's Axe-iom.

The average “fixer” can do more damage with an axe than the average

An aerial which fell down on Grandpa.”

plumber can do with a whole kit of lethal weapons. With the axe the “fixer” has got Robinson Crusoe, George Washington and Bob Pretty whopped to a chip. As a one-tool operator there is nothing to beat him in the realms of destruction.

Watch him build a fowlhouse with only his trusty axe and a tin of nails. As casually as the man who mapped Melbourne he scratches out the ground plan with a stick. Then he puts in the piles. Then he lops off the joists with his axe to the required length. Then he finds that he has amputated too much. Then he extracts said piles and replants them. Then he finds the joists are too long; he slices off another length, but discovers that he has overdone it again. So he replants the piles and repeats the aforesaid processes until the fowlhouse, which originally was designed to hold twelve hens, has shrunk, until a china egg would feel crowded in it. So he decides that he won't build a fowlhouse, after all, and uses the joists for a wireless aerial, which falls down on grandpa. Of course there are husbands who can mend things that will stay mended, and make things which stay made; but they are so rare as to be practically museum pieces. There are few men who have entered upon the “sere and yellow” who cannot say:—

I was a fixer once,
But now have learnt the error of my ways,
And am content to be a sorry dunce,
Enjoying well my peaceful Saturdays.
No leaking pipe can tempt me with a wrench,
No locks nor clocks nor taps have power to call,
No more for me the fixer's little bench—
My trusty axe hangs rusting on the wall.
I've learnt my lesson—learnt it to the core,
And say with Edgar Allan—“Nevermore!”

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