Hawke's Bay Today columnist Roger Moroney.
A couple of years ago, after plunging into gardening mode, I took on a slightly unwieldy looking bush which had sprouted great stalks which had subsequently died and dried and which looked rather ratty.
Easy job.
Get the old hand clippers out and give it a short back and sides.
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The way I'd given so many of its colleagues out the back a similar dressing down.
Easy peasy...except this time the unexpected happened...although I sort of expected it to eventually.
Because that's what happens when you forget that familiarity breeds contempt.
So it was a few days of severe pain and a few more of slow recovery after one of those dead and dried stalks decided to have the last say.
It reached out and scratched the cornea in my left eye.
As I rather sheepishly replied to the eye specialist doc..."ahh, no, I wasn't wearing any eye protection".
The look he gave me was similar to the look a teacher gives you when you turn up in the morning with the homework untouched.
"Oh you learn by your mistakes though", several people said and yes, from that painful point in time I would get the safety glasses out and on...most times.
The bush, suitably trimmed, is still there but I am now extremely wary when I get near it...those stalks are no longer allowed to extend.
So, no more scratched corneas.
Nope, I've stepped up (or down to be more exact) to perfecting the art of extensive bruising.
I have joined that time-honoured statistic regarding accidents involving a ladder.
In this case, a ladder, a tree and a fence.
Falling off a ladder is right up there on the ACC and other accident-watching fronts, and I'm always aware that height can be a harsh ingredient to any mishap.
The higher you go of course the further you fall.
So one must be wary of ladders, and equally wary of how they are placed and planted before they are stepped upon.
But hey, when I took my old reliable aluminium workmate down the back on the first day of the year I saw no dried stalks awaiting me, and even if they had I was prepared for I was wearing my safety glasses.
Yep, lesson learned...keep those eyes protected.
What I went after were spouting branches of a great tree which is forever sprouting fresh branches, and the ones I targeted were low and eating space and light.
Unfold the ladder, extend it into the thing, wedge it against the trunk and get into it.
No worries.
And then I shifted it a bit to the side, and as the truck was too far from the awaiting branches I casually leaned it against the fence and the roof of a tin shed which backs on to it.
No worries.
Branches trimmed, all fine and dandy, and I looked down and saw the great swathe of them below and realised I'd have to trim them up to get them to fit into the old wool packs I use to deliver my "all green waste mate" to the green waste place.
So I started coming down the ladder and about 4m from the ground something happened.
The ladder sort of folded and it was all over in seconds.
I'd crashed down through branches and caught my left arm on the fence and then the ladder...which then proceeded to trap my right ankle at a nasty angle.
Bruising and blood... and the doc said later I should have broken the arm in a couple of places but it was clearly quite strong.
I suggested the motorcycle prangs I was adept at when I was younger had toughened them.
I then got that look again...you know...the one the teacher gives you when you arrive in the morning with the homework untouched.
So I am in recovery mode now as the haematoma on my arm is as tender as it is extensive, and the right foot is swollen and strangely coloured.
Although there I was, four days later, bandaged and hobbling, back up the ladder because the tree over the other side needed seeing to.
But it was a very small tree and I only went as far as the third rung.
And the ladder was VERY securely planted and all the clip parts were affixed.
These sudden and harmful events are most certainly wake-up calls and are valuable in the sense that they may finally get one to change one's far-too-casual approach to potentially dangerous situations.
They come out of nowhere and they target the unwary and the far-too-casual.
My "be wary" genes are now very active.
Oh but hey, at least I had my safety glasses on.