I decided to buy an axe the other day, primarily to chop up the remains of a tree stump in the garden but it should also come in handy for a few other odd jobs too like.....well, I don’t know yet. I just wanted a axe, its something I felt I ought to have. There’s a little old fashioned hardware shop nearby run by a stocky, grey haired old lad inevitably dressed in a well-pressed brown overall. The exterior is shabby and unremarkable, painted in a drab post war olive green but inside it's a temple to construction and invention. The walls and shelves are lined with spades, shovels, chucks, bits, drills, saws, screws, fork handles, spirit levels and tons of satisfyingly obscure bits of kit I've never seen before but, given the chance, would happily hang up in my garage. Its a haven for all the many skilled craftsmen, engineers, artisans and solitary genius inventors who have passed through its doors, not forgetting all the obsessive blokes who like to tinker with things in their shed. Or people like me who just want to chop some stuff.

After a little browsing around, comparing axes, trying them for size, weighing them up, running my keen eye along the shaft and the head as if I was the world’s foremost axe expert in town to check out the standard of the local axes, I took my chosen axe to the counter. Here the old fella wrapped a carrier bag round the head and presented it to me like a trophy. I left the shop carrying it upside down, the head cradled in the palm of my hand, the way I think I was taught in the cubs or was it some residual folk memory? It was an automatic reflex anyway and I set off for home the axe at my side, revelling in the feel and weight of it.

Curiously it brought out some very primitive instincts in me - it was no longer just a tool, it was a weapon. I felt armed, powerful and complete - like a warrior or a gladiator - ready at a moment's notice to defend everyone I knew and loved from marauding invaders or invading marauders – I wouldn’t differentiate, not if they got in the way of my mighty axe.

Or maybe it just triggered the psychotic nutter in me, I don’t know. I was certainly itching to use it and that began to worry me. Even on a quiet suburban street I was on the lookout for suspicious dodgy geezers to challenge: Yeah, try and mug me now you gastard, I muttered under my breath, just try it and see how you look with your stupid, shaven, tattooed head cleft in twain, hah. That was a little disturbing. I’m not normally so bloodthirsty, so it was probably just the novelty of carrying such a lethal weapon in the modern world. Although I did wonder if the axe was perhaps possessed by an ancient evil spirit which was trying to overcome my will power and force me to commit mass murder. Well, it could happen.

Luckily I managed to make it home without slaughtering anyone and stored it safely away in the garage. I like my axe. Tomorrow I’m going to chop some wood with it. Or become a lone wolf vigilante. I’ll see how I feel in the morning.