It’s turning out to be a lovely sunny morning. I breakfasted on buttered toast–the single person’s friend–and now, as the sun is warming things up, I’m about to go out and cut the front grass. It’s likely to start raining any time this afternoon and the forecast for the next few days keeps changing, so grass cutting will be difficult or dangerous again for a while–electric mowers, even with earth leakage cutoff protectors, are not a good idea in wet conditions.
Graham and I had another telephone conference on the state of the back garden and it turns out that all he had in mind for me to arrange is a bit of strimming [weed whacking], leaving the rest for him to do when he comes home. I shall try to find a local guy who’s willing to spend a couple of hours on this task–our electric strimmer is too heavy for me to manage–but we’ve decided that it’ll not make much difference to Graham’s task in October so there’s no pressure.
I confess I’m grateful for that. I’ve studied the yellow page advertisements for gardening services and was not fired with confidence. It may be that, as with the cavity wall insulation job, it’s best to leave finding and engaging services here in Wales to Graham, who can 0ut-Welsh anyone when he needs to. As an Englishman in a foreign land I tend to get ripped off too easily, based on past experience.
Besides, Dolly and I much prefer to take a back seat these days. I tend to worry too much about the negotiations, and Dolly doesn’t care. Which of us is the wiser I’m not tempted to judge. The end result is much the same. Dolly and I sit in the sun and watch the world, and the weeds, go by. What more do you expect of us?
I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary poetry, and not making much of it. Sometimes, when I’m forced to sigh and admit that contemporary poets inhabit a different planet, feeling as though the world is filled with poets scritty-scratching away at their work in a testosterone-charged monochrome atmosphere redolent with the sour smell of booze and zit ointment, producing poems I don’t understand. So I scratch my head, or my tummy, and go sit in the sun, wondering where all the flowers have gone.
Or go and cut the grass. That is something that I can do.
