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Silent tribute to old friend
THE journey with the car seats down had not been easy. Not since we had an errant lawnmower in the back which insisted on rolling backwards and forwards depending on the incline in the road.
That's the trouble with cylinder mowers (especially with a roller fitted to the back), they tend to be quite mobile and have a mind of their own.
Good job then that I had number one son with me who valiantly held on to the hyperactive Suffolk Punch while we got it to the lawn mower hospital to be fixed.
Oh and did I mention that we also had our heads hanging out of the windows to avoid being knocked out by the petrol fumes? It's not an electric mower you see.
Anyhow we were dropping off one mower (my father-in-law's) and picking up another (ours) – a similar but older model, which had been in their A&E department for almost three weeks.
We stood patiently waiting to make the exchange which gave us ample time to take in the sight before us. Great big, shiny, sit-on, mini tractor types which would make grass-cutting a doddle and which made our paint-peeling, rust-bucket of a machine look like something Noah might have used to give his lawn one last trim before boarding the Ark.
There was a nearby skip which prompted my son to quip: "I reckon ours is in there."
He was not far off the mark as it turned out.
The kindly mower man eventually emerged from the warehouse and fixed us with a sympathetic look.
"It's not good," he said softly. "I'm sorry, we did everything we could but, well, it was very old. It's cut its last, I'm afraid."
He then asked if we would like to leave it there for them to scrap or whether we'd like to take it home with us.
I wondered whether he had visions of us digging a big hole at the bottom of the garden and burying it.
"We'll take it," I said.
So then of course there was another journey to endure with another restless Suffolk Punch.
Its days of making perfect lawn stripes might have been over but it was still capable of movement and by the time we had pulled away from the mower hospital and onto the bypass, it had already made several, mad, criss-cross journeys from one end of the car to the other, my son attempting to restrict its movements, as if trying to control some wild animal.
I plotted the flattest route home possible but there were still some hairy moments.
Once back we lifted it on to the lawn and stood silently around it in hushed respect. We tried the starter cord but the response was just a woeful splutter.
Meanwhile, as Howard Keel nearly sang in Oklahoma!, the grass is as high as an elephant's eye.
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Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
