I BELIEVE it was old Will Shakespeare himself who counselled that one should neither a borrower nor a lender be, and he certainly wasn’t talking out of his doublet and hose.

While I will happily lend out any of the few tools that I possess, in the vain hope that the borrower will fail to return them, getting me out of demanding household tasks, I hate borrowing other people’s treasured equipment.

While my small collection of assorted spanners, hammers and other implements lie in an untidy heap in a tin box in a corner of the garage, I find that other men have entire wall units filled with gleaming screwdrivers, pristine pliers and an ordered array of nuts, bolts, screws and washers of every size imaginable.

The other day though, whilst visiting my sister in law, Mrs Hextol struck me dumb by asking for the loan of the petrol strimmer belonging to my brother in law.

I fired off a series of mind bullets silently urging him to say no, but to my horror, he said he would be only too delighted. He was soon demonstrating the bewildering assortment of switches, buttons and levers which had to be deployed in a certain order to get the thing to start.

He enthused: “You push this switch, set the choke, give this little button a few pumps to prime the carburetor, set this lever to halfway, and then pull this handle” – and at the first time of asking, the little engine roared into burbling life.

I had to put the back seat down to get the machine into the back of the car, and as an afterthought he added a gallon of petrol, even though he was sure there was more than enough in the tank for my modest requirements.

The machine was called into action the very next day, when Mrs Hextol decided it would be the very thing to tidy up the family graves in Bellingham cemetery.

I have to admit they were somewhat unkempt, with family members reposing below a foot-high forest of dockens and vinegar leaves, but I was confident that they would soon fall victim to the roaring monster I had at my disposal.

I laid it on the cemetery path, flicked switches, pressed buttons, adjusted levers and tickled the choke – but when I pulled the starting cord, the machine was as dead as the long-term occupants of the cemetery.

For the next half hour, I fiddled and twiddled, tickled and coaxed, and used the sort of language not usually heard on consecrated ground, and was on the verge of giving up when for no particular reason, the strimmer decided to stop playing silly beggars and roared into life.

I felt as though I was holding a ravening lion, and those weeds and grasses were soon toppling before those swishing strings, before the machine stopped as suddenly as it had started, and refused to restart.

But the job was done, and Mrs Hextol decided the machine just needed a rest – and perhaps its all but dry tank topping up with petrol – before it was unleashed on a forest of weeds close to the rear of Hextol Towers .

It sprang to robust life without protest the next day, and I attacked the serried ranks of thistles, nettles and elders like William Wallace pounding the English. The weeds fell in swathes at first, but then refused to co-operate – and I realised with horror there was no longer any cable flying round.

I rushed down to Broon’s Bits in the village to purchase more string – and then realised I had no idea how to get it into the machine.

I spent the next eight hours vainly trying to get the string onto the spool I had finagled out of the machine, but it lashed about like a nest of pink mambas, and simply refused to co-operate.

Springs burst out of hidden orifices and washers tinkled to the floor, before I finally admitted defeat and rang the owner.

He said in an ominously quiet voice there was no need to have removed any internal spools, as the strimmer had an automatic line feed.

I have seldom been more relieved when he rang later to say that everything had gone back together perfectly, the machine was working admirably, and I could borrow it again any time I wanted.

Not a chance!