On mowing

The monsoon has let up long enough for every bloke in the South East to get out his lawnmover. This includes me. Mowing the small lawn puts one in a meditative state. Up and down, empty hopper. Up and down, empty hopper. One’s thoughts turn, naturally, to mowing.

There are two ways to mow ones lawn, the wrong way and the right way. The wrong way is to get some sort of foul, orange, plastic electric powered thing and move it over the grass in a chaotic manner, the scything blade spinning, slashing grass and distributing fox-shit at high speed - a concrete example of what happens when the shit hits the fan. These are the ‘mowers’ favoured by those who consider leisurewear to be a replica sports kit, rather than tweed and a stout brogue.

(There are only three types of replica sports wear it is acceptable to wear, in order to show solidarity with your team. The first is a darts shirt of the Flying Swan team in Brentford. The second is the blazer of the Frimply Gentlemen third eleven and the last is the regimental tie of the 2nd Highland Ardbastards (the ‘thistlers’), on the assumption that bagging Arabs is a sport, but only if you give them a head-start before getting them in the sights of your Hinckly and Fisk water-cooled repeating blastmaster 8000).

Then there’s the right way, my way.

This is of course to get the staff to do it but as I appear to be getting through under gardeners at a rapid rate (the latest, Richards, is laid up after falling out of a tree he was attempting to coppice using the traditional coppicing tool of a fistful of powerful drugs selected at random from the back of Matron’s cabinet and a tin-opener) I had to mow the small lawn myself at the weekend.

Hover movers are a blight. Electric mowers are for scum. Petrol mowers are fine although the pipe-smoking gardener should avoid them. Ride-on mowers are of course essential for mid-sized gardens. But for an estate, only sheep will do. Border Cheviot for the areas away from the house, Shropshire (obviously) for those areas used as paths or for illicit rumpy-pumpy and, of course, Scottish Blackface for the first pass at any lawn where a game might be played.

However, if you intend to use the lawn for any sport where a wager might be made on the outcome, you’re going to have to get your mower out.

A proper mower should be a push-along mower. The metal case should be made from the metal reclaimed from any downed Luftwaffe aircraft you might have. The blades should be from the metal from a Spitfire propeller, sharpened to levels of Wildian wit and blessed during a harvest festival by any priest of the Church of Scotland.

The roller is where many make their most common mistake. Some use granite recovered from a millstone, others use stone reclaimed from a handy nearby monolith. This simply will not do. The best stone is a marble cylinder reclaimed from any pillar (Doric, for preference) from a Roman villa.

So one mows. The whirr of the blades, the smell of new-mown grass, the sweet, sweet nature of honest toil and of course, upon completion, the tipping of the cuttings over ones neighbour’s fence.