garden | Head In A Blender

On Sunday I decided to bite the bullet and buy a strimmer to tackle the garden again. It had been over a year since I’d last done it, and last week I swear I saw a man in a loincloth swing past on a vine.

For those who don’t know what a strimmer looks like, it’s one of these.

In fact, this is the exact model I bought.

I got it home, assembled it and ventured into the garden to kick Mother Nature in the vagina.

‘This is going to be fun’ I thought to myself as I pulled the trigger and the 350 watt engine roared into life. I felt manly and primal as I revved the engine in a threatening manner. The greenery in front of me was about to feel nylon death.

After 30 seconds of sheer and utter joyful destruction, the strimmer stopped cutting. I switched it off, checked underneath and saw that the spool of nylon cord had snapped.

Actually, if it had simply snapped I could’ve pressed the ‘manual feed’ button and pulled more thread through the holes, but this had snapped completely and gone inside the spool. The feeling was similar to noticing the cord on your joggers (sweat pants) had retracted inside the holes.

No problem; I’ll just open up the spool and manually feed it through. I soon discovered that threading the small red nylon cord through tiny aluminium holes in the ‘feeder’ was like trying to perform keyhole surgery with your elbows.

(not actual photo, but close enough)

After 3 or 4 minutes of silent rage and suppressed expletives I was back in business.

Tearing through the flora again made me feel alive; alive I tell you! I shredded through the overgrowth like an 80’s action hero with an Uzi.

It was short lived, however. Another 20 seconds and the same thing happened again.

I could see where this was going.

This time the nylon cord had not only snapped and retracted into the spool, but it had melted slightly and fused itself to both the spool and the coiled up nylon cord inside.

A further 5 or 6 minutes of keyhole surgery, and some less silent rage and expletives, and I was up and running again.

Feel nylon death you bastard garden!

Another 15 seconds and it happened again. This time I had to prise the melted cord away from the spool with a screwdriver.

This went on for a while. In fact, on the 8^th time of doing this the nylon cord decided to unspool itself fully right before my eyes.

The strimmer now looks like this.

(actual photo)

In its 20 minute working life it had one function.

One!

Time to call a gardener.

I have a fear of spiders.

I don’t care that everyone knows. I’m a 6ft tall, heavily tattooed man and I’m scared of teeny tiny eight legged beasties.

I can’t bring myself to pick one up if my life depended on it, instead resorting to the old ‘pint glass and envelope’ technique; followed up with moving through the house at great speed screaming “open the door/window quick quick quick QUICK QUICK!!”.

As you can see, I’m very butch and manly about it.

Mind you, in my defence, house spiders are big fuckers.

Anyway, yesterday I decided to attack my front garden which had grown to Jumanji proportions; towering above my kitchen window and plunging it in darkness. I knew something had to be done when I realised that recently I always seemed to be cooking at night, no matter what time of day it was.

So I donned some heavy duty gardening gloves, hired a local jungle guide called UmBongo*, messaged my family to tell them I love them and ventured out into the leafy unknown.

It’s obvious that as soon as you start to uproot all sorts of flora and fauna the local wildlife will scarper like chavs in Poundland, but never before have I seen so many different sizes and shapes of spiders in such a small area in such a short space of time.

Did I squeal like a girl and cry for my mum?

Nope.

For some reason, because I had heavy duty gloves on, I somehow felt a bit invincible. I even had the little shits crawling over my flip flopped feet and I simply brushed them away like I was channelling Chuck Norris.

This reminded me of those times when I was a kid trying to get to sleep and hearing a noise or creak in the darkness of my bedroom. I was shit scared and hid under the covers (with a little gap for oxygen of course) because that was somehow enough to protect me from a burglar, a monster or a fuck off massive chainsaw.

As I think back I realise how daft it was to think a duvet would protect me. How could a little bit of material make an appropriate barrier to the nastiness outside?

And yet here I was, a full grown man, with ‘magic gloves’, providing a lack of fear of anything with more limbs than me.

Except Tarantulas.

Definitely not Tarantulas.

Tarantulas can fuck off.

Seriously.