Mowing the lawn
Anne suggests that I mow the lawn - the greater part of the lawn, beyond the apple tree, was once the old school playground - it's now turfed over - there was a small garden for the teacher, in front of the school house - this, too, is now turfed over
Our neighbour across the railway, Mr Matcham, says he can remember the village children singing hymns in the playground, whilst the teacher played a harmonium -
Mr Matcham's christian name is Gerald - he has very bright blue eyes - they pierce your heart - he's in his mid eighties - he worked on the railway, he tells us, for forty year - during the war he shot anything that moved for the butcher in Wareham - every morning he puts out seed for the birds, who swirl around his thick white hair - Anne says he looks like St Francis whilst he's shaking out the box of seed -
The lawn near the house is uneven, with swellings and dips of turf - there are a number of bare patches of earth, where I topped and tailed the molehills - pebbles, and sometimes white shards of china, are thrown out with the dark soil by the silky delvers - there must be a mole city down there under the grass, and around the roots of the apple tree -
Whilst Anne cuts down brambles like a demon, I pour petrol into the fuel tank of the green beast - check its oil - heave the brute around - pull the cord - the beast lunges forward, with plumes of oily smoke and waves of petrol fumes - I cut glorious stripes in the long wet grass
I think - I really enjoy mowing - I get drunk smelling the scent of the cut grass - heaping up the cuttings in a green ziggurat in the compost bin, near the old churchyard - I can see the stripes running parallel to each other -
When I retired - the new headteacher, Debbie, gave me an anthology by Andrew Motion - the anthology was called The Cinder Path - I'd said that I admired his poems - it was really his gentle manner and quiet voice that I'd liked at first, and his biography of Philip Larkin - but there's a poem there, in the anthology, on Pages 57 and 58 - The Mower - that bit about vanishing for good makes my withered heart lurch - I think of my dear dad - but he never, so far as I can tell, liked mowing - or gardening - I just do as I'm told he said -
Anne suggests that I mow the lawn - the greater part of the lawn, beyond the apple tree, was once the old school playground - it's now turfed over - there was a small garden for the teacher, in front of the school house - this, too, is now turfed over
Our neighbour across the railway, Mr Matcham, says he can remember the village children singing hymns in the playground, whilst the teacher played a harmonium -
Mr Matcham's christian name is Gerald - he has very bright blue eyes - they pierce your heart - he's in his mid eighties - he worked on the railway, he tells us, for forty year - during the war he shot anything that moved for the butcher in Wareham - every morning he puts out seed for the birds, who swirl around his thick white hair - Anne says he looks like St Francis whilst he's shaking out the box of seed -
The lawn near the house is uneven, with swellings and dips of turf - there are a number of bare patches of earth, where I topped and tailed the molehills - pebbles, and sometimes white shards of china, are thrown out with the dark soil by the silky delvers - there must be a mole city down there under the grass, and around the roots of the apple tree -
Whilst Anne cuts down brambles like a demon, I pour petrol into the fuel tank of the green beast - check its oil - heave the brute around - pull the cord - the beast lunges forward, with plumes of oily smoke and waves of petrol fumes - I cut glorious stripes in the long wet grass
I think - I really enjoy mowing - I get drunk smelling the scent of the cut grass - heaping up the cuttings in a green ziggurat in the compost bin, near the old churchyard - I can see the stripes running parallel to each other -
When I retired - the new headteacher, Debbie, gave me an anthology by Andrew Motion - the anthology was called The Cinder Path - I'd said that I admired his poems - it was really his gentle manner and quiet voice that I'd liked at first, and his biography of Philip Larkin - but there's a poem there, in the anthology, on Pages 57 and 58 - The Mower - that bit about vanishing for good makes my withered heart lurch - I think of my dear dad - but he never, so far as I can tell, liked mowing - or gardening - I just do as I'm told he said -
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