Time to cut the lawn! 5 little innocent words that when they are not together sound so innocent and not menacing at all. Put them together though and add the voice of a wife and you have a phrase that will send many a man weeping to the tool shed to get out the mower and yes I am one of those poor unfortunates that absolutely loathes anything to do with gardens at all. And yes today as I woke up those were the words that greeted me. No good morning darling how are you, no tea and biscuits to wake up to not even a happy puppy face bouncing around at the bottom of the bed, just those words thrown at me.
So yes some of today was spent trying to get the grass in the back garden into some semblance of order. Now I have made one stupid mistake in the past (yes just the one!) and that was not listening to my wife! Shame! I hear you call, always listen to your wife because they are a)always right or b)going to be right eventually and then never let you forget and when a and b are combined then you just know your quiet life is over. Anyway, when we were buying our new lawnmower I decided I wanted a JCB hover mower! I can see some of you guys out there now grinning at the JCB bit. You just have to do it don’t you? A damn bloody JCB to cut the grass!!! Oooooh yeah!!! Yup. That’s what I wanted and that is what we were damn well going to get except that the store had none in stock. Damn! So we go and get a hover mower from a very well known manufacturer of hover mowers and all the time my wife is telling me to just get a traditional mower with one of them blade things on the front because they have been around for longer than the trees and if they have been around that long they can’t be bad!!! But no I wanted a boys toy didn’t I?
Bad, so very very bad! I am referring to of course not only my decision to stick by my guns and get a hover but the mower itself. It is probably the worst lawnmower I have ever used in my life! But of course I am stuck with it now, I can’t go back to my wife and say “Look dear you were right, the mower sucks and I want a new one, in fact I think you should go and buy one for us!” And why can’t I do this? Because of the male pride! I make a stupid decision and now have to live with it for as long as that lawnmower lives. Which is where my plan came in. If I manage to break the thing then I will have to go and buy a new one won’t I? Yeah!!! But how to break it so that it is not covered by the guarantee and it doesn’t look like I did it on purpose?? This is where I came unstuck, nothing came to mind! Not a damn bloody thing!! Usually I would have some sneaky cunning plan that all the super criminals in the world would be proud of but nothing!!!
So this morning did find me out in the garden mowing the lawn, sulking at the crappy lawnmower and its stupid little whirly blade and its stupidly small grass box that makes it back heavy and thus making the mower tip over backwards when it gets stuck on a grassy knoll! But I will get it, sooner or later something will come to mind and there will be an accident of some sort. Or I will admit to my lovely wife that she was right. But that isn’t going to happen is it? Once again I am a man, I have that damn pride thing. Bugger! Maybe she might like the idea of a wildlife garden? Long grass, weeds, and erm… wildlife? Who wants short grass anyway! Grass is meant to be long and luscious and nice enough for our puppies to frolic through it. This is going to be my new angle I think “Wife! (Commanding see, don’t make it a question let her know she has no choice!), I am not going to cut the grass anymore! We are going to be having one of them there wildlife sanctuary things! What? Sell the lawnmower? The nice little hover thing that I love! How dare you!!!”
See no mater what happens I am damned, if I had an idea of how to kill the thing I would, it would be like a Viking burial for it. I can’t sell it because that would be admitting my mistake and I can’t do the wildlife thing because then I would be made to sell it and I would be made to get rid of my boys toy!!
Only thing to do now is get a gardener to do it for me I think, that way we are all happy. He can struggle with the crappy mower, I get to keep crappy mower and my wife gets a pretty garden. Might cost a fortune in the end but at least I don’t have to say I was wrong! Pride, thou name is Flymo!!