White Van Man

There are some things that I should just accept that I either can’t do or don’t have the patience to do. Gardening may well be one of these things. If you read my last post you will know that this weekend we embarked upon an exercise to rid our weed ridden garden that looks like it may have originally been designed to be a patio and to replace it (eventually) with lush grass. 

To be honest we are well on our way to doing this. The slabs are up, the top soil is down, the fertiliser is in and, just for good measure the trailing ivy that is slowly toppling the dividing wall between us and our neighbours has been dramatically trimmed.

How much I contributed to this is not entirely clear but I know that my talents may not extend to raking in top soil. I could see by the look on the present Mrs Hayward’s face yesterday morning that I may not have been doing a very good job. I was reminded of the look on her face when she witnessed my attempts at painting the banister on the stairs in white gloss a few years ago.

Actually that face was slightly angrier as she felt my attempts at gloss painting weren’t entirely the neatest and that I was applying it in a random and haphazard manner more reminiscent of Rolf Harris. I didn’t have to ask whether she “could see what is it is yet” as with her own eyes she could see that it was a poorly painted streaky banister.  My use of matt paint was marginally better but in a good light you could say that it was a little, well, patchy. Like all great artists I like to show my style in the elegant brush strokes and textures. It turns out that all Mrs Hayward required was a nice evenly painted wall rather than a Jackson Pollock tribute.
So my gardening efforts were much the same. What I can do though, I do well. If you need something lifted then I’m your man. If you need something driven somewhere and lifted in or out of the back of the car, I’m in my element. I really should have been a white van man and if you’ve seen my flamboyant driving style I’m sure you’d agree.

So lugging heavy slabs around and driving to Homebase for bags of top soil are well within my abilities. The delicate art of applying and raking over the soil, perhaps not.

It’s therefore a surprise that we are in a position to be able to add the grass seed next week and then, apart from applying regular water we can sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour. I am not a particularly religious man despite being strangely lured by the sound of the church bells chiming on Sunday morning (which never came to anything as they strangely disapprove of people turning up at the church doors in just an old t-shirt and some worn through boxer shorts. Talk about Christian spirit) but I shall be praying to whatever all-knowing deity chooses to listen to my pleas for little green shoots to appear.

It doesn’t seem like a good time to be growing grass from seed due to the surprisingly ‘summer of 1976’ conditions we have been experiencing but I have to remember that this is Britain, and an absolute downpour is never too far away. 
So with all this in mind I have next weekend to look forward to. I don’t mean the Royal Wedding, that will pass me by with a pleasing sense of ‘don’t give a damn’. I’m still trying to find the perfect activity whilst Bill and Katy tie the knot. Back in 1997, whilst the world was sobbing in front of their TV sets as Elton John warbled in Westminster Abbey I drove to Chichester to collect my best mate’s girlfriend and her pet rat.  It was a great time to do this as the roads were empty and I’m hoping for the same on Friday. Well, I’m not expecting to be transporting vermin this time but a trip out might be in order.

No, the real reason this coming weekend is exciting is because on Saturday I actually get to drive a white van and lift many things. I shall be in white van man heaven.

So, if you need anything large or heavy picking up and moved somewhere just let me know. I’ll turn up in an in a grubby t-shirt and jeans, the music playing too loud and I’ll park in the middle of the road with my hazard lights on just like all good white van men. However If you want someone to landscape your garden or paint your walls however, call an expert.

Green Fingers

I am not Alan Titchmarsh. In some respects this is a blessed relief but, if I was, our garden would not be sporting the council estate chic that it currently has. The shed is looking shabby, the weeds are bursting their way up through the crooked patio slabs, and all the plants that we wanted to come into bloom and bring fragrance and light into our lives have all given up the ghost and died. It has become a home for discarded pots, gates and, for some reason, a tyre. 

To be honest the tyre should have been discarded a while ago but if my memory serves me correctly the present Mrs Hayward had some creative idea that she could transform the discarded tyre from a Vauxhall Corsa into a decorative plant pot. I was less than convinced that she could pull this off and subjected her idea to derision and ridicule. Not being one to be put off by my opinions I guess she eventually came to the same conclusion and the tyre now lives, unloved and unpainted, beside the shed. 

Thankfully we never embarked upon Mrs Hayward’s other creative idea, to turn an old toilet pan into a novelty flower pot. Again, I pooh-poohed the idea (if you’ll excuse me) as I didn’t see the attraction in trying to entertain guests at a barbecue whilst sat next to an old Armitage Shanks loo. Even with the prospect of Begonias bursting forth from it, for me it didn’t shout sophisticated or charming. Perhaps I’m a Philistine and my wife is a visionary. Time will tell.

Mrs Hayward’s solution to our troublesome garden is to patio it over, but properly, with no scope for weeds to appear. However with a tight budget of minus nothing this isn’t practical but inspired by our new neighbours (on the unattached side) we have decided to press on with a solution. Grass. Yes, grass is the future. OK, so it was my idea all along but if you leave an idea long enough to germinate in Mrs Hayward’s mind she eventually comes around to my way of thinking. It’s like Sky+ and smart phones, despite initial resistance she eventually concedes that I am right. 

OK, I’m pushing my luck here as she won’t agree with that point of view at all, and she is also reminding me at every turn that the grass is a “temporary measure”, just “for a couple of years” until she comes in with a load of slabs and a cement mixer and patios over the lot, but we’ll see. 

So, over the next couple of weekends the old cracked slabs will disappear and a new lush lawn will spring up. Which is a good idea in principle but I am not built for manual labour and I know that three slabs in I will be wishing I’d not started such a painstaking endeavour. I’m looking forward to driving the slab laden van to the skip but the rest of it is a bit of a pain and all the time I will be dreaming of a cool beer in a pub garden. 

I have to keep reminding myself that without pain there is no gain and so I will persevere. We are using grass seed so there’s a bit of prep work involved although the Homebase website has been very useful in this respect. I may even use the Elephant poo I got for Christmas as a fertiliser.

Of course once you start you begin to get ideas. The shed’s days are numbered as we intend to downsize to something more compact and sporty, and we really need to put a fence up at the end of the garden as the current wall is too short. Oh, and then there’s the ugly planter. We’ve never really known what to do with that but are loathe to remove it as we suspect it’s holding up the wall between us and our neighbours (on the attached side). With a bit of time and money I would take the whole lot down and get a higher wall or fence erected, mainly so that our neighbour doesn’t hang over it and try to talk to us, like an older and slightly more inebriated version of Chad. 

He’s a nice guy I’m sure but too many times we’ve been caught up in one of his never-ending and slow moving conversations. He will start the chat but never formally end it. He just stops talking and stares at us until his wife comes out to get him or we fake sudden illness. I’ve even been known to drop to the ground and crawl on my belly to the back door so as not to be spotted when he’s in his garden. 

Seriously, ask Mrs Hayward, I’m not even joking. I was helping her put the washing out once when in mid-conversation she turned round to find I had disappeared from view. She eventually spotted me face down on the ground, dragging myself back to safety by my fingernails.

So whatever you do over the next couple of weekends, please spare a thought for me, trying to force myself to be practical and manly when I would rather be standing on the side providing moral support and encouraging words or being pushed about in the wheelbarrow.

Mind you, when it’s done, you can come round for a barbecue.