Cutting Remarks

According to Keats Autumn may be the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness but in our modern world Summer is the season of noise and mega machining of the gardens, forests, fields and frantic road and other works of all kinds.

Economically it is inefficient. Around us we have dozens of houses each with its own lawnmower for a patch of grass at best the size of a football penalty area and often so small a dog could hardly chase its own tail in it. Labour should promise to nationalise the gardens and plan and allocate the cutting of grass according to need and the rest.

More to the point I often see a gardener with a large energy consuming trimmer fiddling away with a bush, taking up to half an hour to trim which I could have done in my prime in five minutes with a pair of shears.

Why have so many people paid so much out for all this big noisy kit when the machinery of old, manual, limited in size did the job just as well? Is it the "man" thing of mine is bigger than yours or the "woman" thing of look at mine and how much it costs to use it?

People put in at the boundaries of their gardens bushes and trees more suited to ancient or tropical forests which grow to vast sizes and take a great deal of time, trouble and expense to manage and a lot more later if they are left to grow on too far.

Cue the Monty Python team and lumberjack song. Perhaps I am too much a man of the past longing for the quiet Sundays when after lunch one would simply rest in a chair and enjoy the silent world of the seventh day.

Unless, of course, the Salvation Army turned up their brass band blasting and with a chorus bellowing that we should march on to glory. My father used to tell them where to go.

But it wasn't glory.