The grass is lapping my ankles, and Mr S and I have been having some brisk discussions on the need for a lawnmower.
When we arrived, we bought an old-fashioned rotary mower, which Mr S
assured me was just the thing to keep him fit. This remains a
largely untested proposition, and the longer the grass gets, the less
chance of it ever succumbing to our little pusher.
Encouraging Mr S to a particular course of action requires careful
planning. Frontal assaults are useless. Sorties and
skirmishes around the margins are time-consuming, but important in
wearing him down. Judging the right psychological moment to
pounce takes years of training.
Mercifully, I've had years of training.
After a couple of weeks of skirmishing, Mr S finally allows that the
time has come to buy a proper lawnmower. He does this on
Christmas Eve, confident in the knowledge that the lawnmower shop is
shut until January 6th, and with any sort of luck, I'll have forgotten
about it by then.
He's wrong about this.
On January 6th, at 9.00am we are both outside the lawnmower shop.
Just as I think I've got him cornered, I hear him ask the lawnmower man
about electric lawnmowers. This is not in my plans at all.
Electric lawnmowers are great for small, flat lawns, not rampant,
weed-infested, roughies like ours.
The lawnmower man turns out to be a useful ally. He dutifully
sets out the pros and cons of electric lawnmowers, and then delivers
the coup de grace by announcing that he doesn't have any. I sense
victory now. I know Mr S won't want to go home without a
lawnmower, because that would mean he'd have to keep fending me off for
another couple of weeks, or until he got bored and capitulated.
Either way it's not a happy prospect.
He agrees to have a look at a petrol mower, and from here on, it's all
plain sailing. Ten minutes later the mower is in the boot of the
car, and I'm almost ready to exhale.
But not quite yet. Mr. S will not touch any piece of equipment
until he has thoroughly read and digested the handbook. This
process is invariably slowed by the fact that every time he sits down
to read he promptly falls asleep.
As I write this, from my study window I can see the lawnmower,
pristine, silent - and without leaving my desk, I know that Mr S is
soundly asleep in his chair with the handbook open on his chest.
Sensing a rising tide of exasperation, I contemplate what noisy
activity I might instigate that would wake him up. What a pity
the harpsichord is in the garage - musical instruments can be extremely
useful in these sort of emergencies. I could make a cake - 10
minutes of the Mixmaster beating eggs and sugar ought to be noisy
enough to get him stirring, and he does love a sponge cake.
I haven't won the battle yet, but victory is so close I can smell it. And it smells like new-mown grass.
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Change of Life 
