As the weather gets warmer – well, less cold, anyway – the familiar spring rituals come round again in their timeless cycle. Each year I know that after I’ve taxed the car, it’ll soon be time to worm the cat, and only yesterday saw the emergence from hibernation of the old summer visitor, the lawn mower. The grass was a bit long and damp but the cutting passed off without incident – resulting in perhaps just one or two bald patches here and there – and soon it was time to strim the edges.
I must say I like my strimmer. I don’t know why I like it so much. The lawnmower does more damage — and it’s a hovercraft, for heaven’s sake, an actual hovercraft! How cool is that? When I was a kid, only Thunderbirds had stuff like that at home! But nonetheless, it’s the strimmer which holds my affection. Perhaps it’s the way I can pretend it’s the horticultural equivalent of a light sabre. Perhaps it’s the berserker way it just bludgeons the opposition into submission with its flailing strings-o-death(TM). (And yes, I said stringS-o-death, my strimmer has two. But I digress) For whatever reason, it’s the strimmer I love.
Until yesterday. My darling beloved strimmer turned on me in the most brutal fashion. While I was tidying the edge of the lawn something – I don’t know what, a stone, a twig, perhaps a bit of the actual string-o-death flew up and struck me in the face. Bleeding, dazed, confused and feeling betrayed, I stumbled into the house to clean up.
Where I met ASOF Junior, who instantly summed up events. He said it was clear what had happened: I fought the lawn, and the lawn won.
