So I was chatting with a man about volunteering opportunities and he mentioned in passing that – if someone was to commit long term – he’d even be prepared to send them on a course to get their strimmer licence. Now, I can see the need for a chainsaw licence, and a driving licence and even a tv licence (although hello? BBC? We’re paying up and we’ve not had either of your fine channels for three days now. Are we the only people on the planet who haven’t access to the olympics?) but a strimmer licence? What the hell – short of ‘don’t wear flip-flops’ and ‘don’t try to strim the dog’ – can the training course consist of? I’m almost tempted to sign up to find out – I’m hoping for competitive strimmer racing, strimmer slaloms, artistic strimming interpretation to classical music, maybe even special strimming events for the people who didn’t do so well on lesson 1 and have strimmed off their feet. It would make up for not getting the olympics. But I’m guessing they just say ‘don’t wear flip-flops and don’t try and strim the dog and that will be fifty quid please.’ It’s the last part that makes it official.
So please, please, please, provide me with your anecdotes of terrible gory life-changing strimmer accidents in the comments so I am not forced to go all Daily Mail on you and declare:
it’s health’n'safety gone mad.
I don’t have one but just about everyone I know who has says that they’re pretty useless and a waste of money! xx
You have a strimmer licence? Or just a strimmer?
Oh no wait – you said you don’t have one…
I was talking about strimmers! As for getting a licence…you did mention health and safety madness!
Have a good weekend! xx
Strimmer… something akin to weed whacking, I take it???
Check this bad news out. Now you know just how dangerous a strimmer can be!
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WHN-457V4D2-5&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4d83db5716f243aa9b3e491f4eacc1ab
Um, I volunteer sometimes, it’s often involved strimming and I definitely don’t have a licence! I hadn’t even heard of that before. I’ve once strimmed my hand (tho the machine wasn’t going full pelt but was on pretty fast) but it just tangled my glove and my hand was okay.
Hedgecutters on the other hand – I ran a petrol driven beastie into my arm and that hurt rather a lot. Again my sleeve offered some protection as it mangled and slowed the blade but it still cut and hurt a lot. I’m going to ask someone about this tomorrow!
I guess this is aimed at people operating the solid-bladed, petrol-driven, industrial version rather than my domestic, fishing-line, electric job…
I remember going on a one-day “abrasive wheel” training course. Why do they insist on showing slides of injuries? Some of us have quite vivid imaginations and can manage fine with verbal descriptions. Call me a wimp but you can’t simply un-see things…
Elizabeth – OK, I take it all back. Guys, strimming is dangerous…
AMP – and in your case, perhaps, some training might not go amiss?
RB – but if they show gory pictures I’m definitely not going.
It’s not just about strimming your feet off at the ankles. With the petrol powered ones it’s also quite possibly to burn yourself on them if your arm touches the motor after it’s been running. Dangerous machines these
I remember Bob Flowerdew on the telly describing a strimming accident which happened to him. He tried to strim an area of long grass which, unknown to him, contained a large and rather disgusting cowpat. The result was rather unpleasant apparently.
[...] It’s grass-cutting time on Big A-Road, there being a brief gap in the rain. We saw them out in their hi-vis outfits with their strimmers and their ride-on mowers on the way out to Notso Bigtown and also on the way back. Or rather, we saw one of them on the way back, and as we approached we could see that he was jerking up and down spasmodically beside a high stone wall. Were we about to come upon the aftermath of some dreadful strimmer accident? [...]
Strimmers through up a lot of debris, the main crux of the training is how to use the machine so that it throws the debris away from you while avoiding it hitting any one else. Its called common sense, which ironically isn’t that common. Its only a joke till someone gets stuck with a junkies needle that was hidden in the grass or a bit of glass…
Thanks, I should probably try to be less flippant about these things