Chapter Twenty Two

22


The elusive art of appearing in my element

Saturday, October 1

I should have been writing a long, heartfelt mitigating letter to the Hoggs pleading my innocence. I should have been seeking psychotherapy after a gut wrenching week within almost constant earshot of Fergus Blaine. Or perhaps I should have been brooding on our new three seater IKEA Ekeskog sofa (finished in Blekinge white, whatever that was). Watching soap operas on our new Panasonic 32 inch flat screen television while awaiting the inevitable reappearance of the two constables seeking a full explanation of those fingerprints. I didn’t do any of these things. Instead I attempted to lose myself in whining engines and long grass.

Hartley Castle House had considerable grounds to maintain and it was a term of our lease to maintain them – something I had maintained I would do since we’d moved in six weeks ago. Meanwhile the generous expanses of grass encircling our grey manor had maintained a constant and quite alarming pace towards the sky. I’d never seen grass growth like it, a fertile combo of rain and watery sunshine conspiring to super size my lawns. And while winter in its officially freezing form was only six weeks away – and apparently grass didn’t grow here in winter due to the Baltic cold – right now, this was of no consolation. My lawns were an English country jungle.

The day had dawned as immaculately as an autumnal day on the moors could dawn. Polite English sunshine replastered Hartley Castle House’s solemn grey walls in white, almost cheery light. Animals, limp and listless for so long in the drizzle, bustled about for pride of place in the sun like Germans around a hotel pool. And birds, strangely mute of late, were now all a twitter as they contemplated all that unencumbered blue sky.

Gabriel and I had celebrated this welcome break in the weather with some extremely satisfactory post-Japanese-green-tea-and-newspaper sex. As with most of our copulations, it had begun with the pre-coital utterance, ‘Won’t be long,’ words that didn’t auger well from Gabriel’s point of view, but which were actually intended for the dogs. To Kurt and Courtney ‘Won’t be long’ were words of reassurance, words that told them…we wouldn’t be long. I applied these words to all forms of departures, from popping out for a pizza to popping out for a week long holiday with dog sitters installed, to popping into the bedroom and closing the door. It was necessary to close the door otherwise Kurt would ‘rescue’ Gabriel at a critical stage in negotiations. And while I had to agree ‘Won’t be long,’ was never a very promising start, it ultimately satisfied all of us.

Sometime around eleven I donned appropriately rugged attire – track pants, t-shirt, sweat, and brand new Raichle waterproof hiking boots – and with both mower and edger in the middle of the lawn where I could see them, sat on the cold but dry concrete septic tank cover to read the instruction manuals. Kurt and Courtney sat in the sun and looked on.

I started with the edger – it looked simpler and I’d always seen the lawnmower man use that first. On page two of the edger owner’s manual I struck my first snag – the edger required petrol, or a peculiar two stroke combination of petrol and oil. I had neither of these things. Without even looking at the mower owner’s manual, I knew that was going to need petrol and oil as well. I was off to a less than brilliant start.

As I had suspected, the Cragmoor Grocers, Sweet Merchants, Post Office and Tea Rooms were right out of petrol and oil.

‘Noa, ye woan find no petrol round ere,’ said Cragmoor’s answer to The Wet Feather, a correct but somewhat thinner answer. ‘Ye say ye need petrol can as well?’ Much head shaking and sucking through the teeth. ‘Ye best bet be t’Shell out on dual carriageway.’

If I’d already forgotten how utterly isolated and inconvenient Hartley Castle House was, the three hour round trip for something as menial as petrol, oil and a can was a less than gentle reminder. By the time I got back it was too late to edge, let alone mow as I’d managed to get hopelessly lost on the moors (despite Dawn’s commendable efforts) and I’d been stuck behind that many tractors on that many Godforsaken back lanes, I’d been that close to putting my foot to the floor and impaling myself on a plough. Meanwhile Gabriel was that close to self-harm on one of the hot plates which had conspired to turn her lovingly prepared seafood paella into a positive test of the smoke alarms, it took every ounce of patience I had left not to beat the offending alarm into submission with a broom.

Sunday dawned just as clear and bright and was greeted with a virtual carbon copy of yesterday’s behaviour, the only deviations being baby oil and ready access to petrol. Manuals devoured, garden machines crawled around, poked, prodded and peered at from every angle, as well as of course filled with the requisite fuels, I was officially on the end of a spluttering, potentially lethal weapon by midday.

Edging with the strimmer proved a far more dangerous exercise than I’d ever imagined, its dual cord whipping action spectacularly effective in cutting long grass and nettles off at the ankles, equally spectacular at catapulting rocks off at skeet shooting height and velocity. I was deeply concerned a distant sheep would lose an eye. I was doubly deeply concerned about my potential to become a rather close quarters human shield. For once I was glad I wore glasses and for twice, I was a shaken but relieved man when the house, trees, drystone walls, well and castle ruins were all thwacked to short back and sides and I could move on to something less stressful.

Before you could say ‘Don’t cut wet grass,’ I had my first choked half catcher load of wet grass. This only midway through my second sweep of a wide vee from derelict stables to the castle ruins. Scanning the grounds and doing the quick maths I estimated it was going to take until Christmas to mow the entire lawn, a revelation daunting enough to make me call a lawn mowing company there and then.

I didn’t. This wasn’t the suburbs of Brisbane where Jim’s Mowing came and went without a scoff from a single neighbour. This was the North York Moors where my single neighbour – who worked the land from dawn to dusk, almost every day of the week – would scoff. Surely I could work the land a few token hours a month. The grass was wet. It wouldn’t always be wet.

Dislodging the catcher I tipped its sodden contents into a brand new red wheelbarrow and mowed a bit more. I tipped this half catcher-full into the new wheelbarrow, stood back and cursed. My wheelbarrow was already full. Clearly this wheelbarrow had been a ridiculous purchase.

I did one and half more passes and sat the half full catcher atop the grass in the wheelbarrow. I pushed my wheelbarrow with its now patently pathetic capacity for grass to a paddock behind the castle ruins where Dave Land – owner, operator of Hartley Castle Farm – had told me to dump my grass clippings. This paddock was small and lush and contained two bulls (or bullocks as they were called now their nuts had been lopped off without anaesthetic). I had been watching these bullocks from the safety of my yard, growing more and more attached to them (while growing equally and oppositely unattached to red meat) to the point where I had found it necessary to give them names – Duncan and Archie. I had noted that Duncan and Archie were both lame.

Reaching the gate Duncan and Archie were nowhere to be seen. The paddock was roughly two acres in size and doglegged behind woodland in a fat L. I surmised they must be laying in wait around there. Lame or not, I was nervous about opening that gate. I had seen enough footage from Pamplona to know bulls could run, probably even lame ones given enough incentive. And I had seen enough footage of gored matadors getting their paella shoved back up their Spanish asses to know I craved more footage of gored matadors getting their paella shoved back up their Spanish asses.

So there I was at the gate with my spangly new wheelbarrow. And this wasn’t an easy gate. For a start it was about twelve feet wide. I’d seen suburban driveways with such gates. But they were light, flimsy affairs that could be swung wide with a false fingernail. This gate was made of heavy piped metal you could irrigate England through. Worse, it was opened via a strange heavy hydraulic bolt with a chunky spring about the size of one I’d once seen in the wheel arch of an upturned Toyota full of complaining students.

I scrutinized the bolt carefully with the distinct feeling I was being watched. I definitely felt like I was being watched, be it terror suspect-induced paranoia or simply the fact that I always felt like I was being watched. Either way I now needed to behave as if gates were second nature.

It looked simple enough: grab the lever, yank straight out in one smooth action, pull gate. In fact, I could open it with one hand. Which I proceeded to do, the other hand thrust nonchalantly in a track pants pocket.

Whistling in the breezily self conscious manner of a man showering with other men, I grasped the bolt in my right fist and pulled. It didn’t move, but I did. The effect was like when you pick up a beer can expecting it to be full and it’s empty. Your brain has sent signals to your arm to impart a full can of beer’s worth of exertion into the hoisting motion, which not only proves excessive but results in you almost hitting yourself in the face with the empty can. This gate mechanism was a bit like that, only in reverse. I had sent signals to my arm to impart what I thought to be sufficient force on the spring-loaded bolt. When this force proved hopelessly underestimated, I attempted to adjust in the same motion, sending hurried signals to my arm to yank harder. The resulting forces conspired to launch my upper body at the gate in a gravity-assisted lunge. Add another force, that being friction, or a complete lack of it as I was standing in thick, slimy mud, and it became clear that, unless I got my hand out of my pocket and defended myself, I was going to head butt the gate. I, of course, couldn’t get my hand out of my pocket as it was a tight zipper pocket and such pockets are reluctant to let go of hands at the best of times. My feet went from underneath me and down I went, head butting the gate and falling in a wincing heap in the mud beside it.

So ended a futile attempt to appear in my element.

Bum and back covered in mud, a bruise brewing on my forehead, I threw pride to the wind, wrestled and wrenched at the spring-loaded bolt with both hands in a display of manic ineptness. Suffice it to say I ultimately beat the gate into submission, and pulled it open with a groan of relief. I discovered I was sweating despite the cool air.

Now I had a new crisis. The gate had swung wide open providing sufficiently broad egress for a three legged lamb to escape, let alone a bull with a bit of a limp.

Working feverishly I emptied the catcher onto the grass, ran back to the wheelbarrow and wheeled that in. No sooner had I manoeuvred it into tipping position above the newly formed pile of grass clippings than two large bullocks, one black and white (Duncan), one beige (Archie), limped into view from behind the woodland.

‘Shit!’ I said.

A calmer head would have realised I could have emptied the wheelbarrow a blade of grass at a time and still got out; such was the rate of progress of the hobbling bulls. Mine was not a calm head. Mine was a head still traumatised by the gate incident, a head highly susceptible to overreaction. I proceeded to overreact.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and had hinds been all I had in sight, there wouldn’t have been a need to panic. But these weren’t hinds, these were heads, huge lurching heads, with pink, snotty noses and horns, and they were bearing down on me at a rate of…they were bearing down on me. I abandoned the wheelbarrow mid-tilt and ran like a girl from the paddock, swinging the gate closed behind me

And there I stood, gate secured, safely out of the paddock, my shiny red wheelbarrow and catcher still in it.

Some considerable minutes later, the bullocks reached the strewn contents of my upended wheelbarrow. They stopped, they stooped. They nibbled. Like the Queen on a crab stick. Slowly. Delicately. Saucer-sized eyes on mine. I estimated that at current rate of progress it would take until next Wednesday for them to finish my clippings and move far enough away for me to retrieve my wheelbarrow. It was while assimilating the implications of this fact that a deep male voice called ‘Those two causing you any problems?’

I jumped and whirled.

Hobbling rapidly my way from the direction of the outbuildings beside the house was a silverback gorilla in blue overalls, a great shambling creature so immense it took me a moment to realise he was human. He was certainly a silverback in dimensions and limped in the bum out manner of a silverback as if favouring a back injury as well as a leg. But he was definitely human as a wide, white haired face poked from the overalls, not flared nostrils and fangs.

‘Hi Dave,’ I said sheepishly.

Perfect.

As if it wasn’t enough for my in laws to think I was a terrorist and my peers to know I was a failure. Now my landlord knew I was a four eyed urban wimp.