It was earlier this year – late January – when Simon “The Monkeyboy” Bullen and I were returning from the London Motorcycle Show, carrying variously new helmets, tools, luggage, paddock stands, leather polish and a variety of other equipment that we’d picked up at it’s a bargain, we’ve got to have it prices at the show.

We got to Waterloo station in rush-hour and boarded a packed, commuter-fed Basingstoke train, and sat chatting merrily about the things we’d bought that day, comparing the merits of his Speed Triple, my 1200GS, his ZX6, my DRZ400, the 748 he’d recently sold, the digital camera he was going to buy (as opposed to the “lost” one that he’d recently rediscovered, buried in a wardrobe), his VW Passat, my Skoda Octavia, where I could get modular hi-fi shelving, whether he needed to get a quad-bike or a tractor… and so forth.

Basically a marginally more advanced form of the aspirational-and-comparative conversation that goes on amongst guys in pubs nationwide.

Pulling into Brookwood, the chap in the seat opposite arose, and addressed us directly:

“You two are the original ‘boys with all the toys’, aren’t you?”

We considered this for a moment, and – after the briefest of pauses – had to concede that perhaps the man had a point.

However for me it is not the mere “toy factor” that makes an object desirable, but also that it does its job really well; perhaps my favourite piece of gardening hardware is the destruction bar, a five-foot-long inch-and-a-half diameter rod of carbon steel, with a spike on one end and a chisel point on the other.

It is the ultimate lever. I can stick one end under a treestump, jump on the other end, and the root-ball springs free from the earth with an audible pop!

I have now found the ultimate wedge, the Wood Grenade – I have an open fire and a pile of logs, and feeding the latter into the former for a romantic (if pointless) winter’s evening is greatly aided if the logs are smaller than the actual grate.

Tap the tip of the Wood Grenade into the heart of a medium-sized log, and with one, perhaps two swings of a sledgehammer, the log shatters into two, three, even four sections.

Apparently I am not the only person to like them, but the author’s posting has clued me in to the fact that, although very destructive, the Wood Grenade is not indestructable.

The destruction bar still wins on that front – but that’s OK.

The best tools are not always the cheapest to maintain, and buying the occasional replacement wedge is certainly going to be cheaper than the service cost for a R1200GS or a Ducati 748.