Striped Ambitions: One Man’s Quest for Lawn Perfection

Everyone who has bought a new house in the countryside has experience mower evolution. Obviously, having upgraded you now have a bigger area of lawn than you had previously, which requires a mower upgrade. So there are now two push mowers in the garage. One day at Lords your wife asks how you put stripes on the turf like that. Back at the tractor shop the sales assistant observes me looking at mowers again, “It’s nice to see you again Mr Adams”.  “The wife now wants stripes”, I respond. There is the familiar sound of the sucking of teeth. “Its not the cutter that makes the stripes you see”, he explains, “it’s the roller”.  “You really need one of these”, he says, pointing out a gleaming new mower with a roller.“ After a season of pushing the mower with the roller you know you need a ride-on. But these are expensive non budgeted items. The budget is already too stretched by the rewiring of the house. You compromise by buying a second hand ride-on, which actually  works well for a season, until the cutter deck needs replacing with a quote of £800 pounds. There is now no choice but to purchase a new ride-on. Your wife tells you that you can’t afford any more machinery this year, otherwise she will have to compromise on the curtain material, and this would be unconscionable. So it’s a cheaper one at the bottom end of the range. There are now five mowers in the garage. After a season the cheaper ride-on mower keeps breaking its belts because of the number of mole hills that you have to plough through. This means that, for the critical dinner party date, the ride-on was at the lawn mower shop getting new belts, and you had to use the push mower to put stripes on the lawn before the guests arrived, and you were still sweating profusely. Constantly fitting new deck belts is also costing hundreds. The tractor shop advises that a ride-on with a 42 inch steel cutter deck to plough through and spread molehill dirt is really what’s required, and thats how you arrive at your sixth mower. The wife’s car is now parked on the drive. She says, “I  don’t understand why you need a garage full of mowers, surely they all do the same thing. What is it with men and their equipment!”.

Your first purchase for a formal garden is a pair of sheers that the advert says are good for box topiary. After half an hour cutting one of a dozen pieces of topiary you realise that this is going to take every weekend, all summer. A new petrol driven Stihl power cutter is what is required. At first you can only cut with one of these for about an hour. Then your arms feel as if they are going to fall off and you are unable to lift your arms to brush your hair the next day. But after some weeks you build the chest and bicep muscles and it starts to feel good. However, the Stihl cutter doesn’t reach the top of the hedge.
The following month you are back at the farm and tractor shop. “Here he is again” the sales man calls out to the storeman”. “told you he’d be back this weekend”. Farm and tractor shops love new country house owners. There is an opportunity to sell them a complete range of tools, but only if it is done carefully over a season. “If you want something that does the tops you really should have bought the Stihl cutter with the extender”, says the salesman.” It has a rotating head so you can cut the top of the hedge from the ground,” the salesman helpfully explains. The Stihl with the extender and the rotating head works well for cutting the higher hedges but gives you a v-roof shape to the tops of all the hedges.
“Can’t you cut the top of the hedges flat like in a normal topiary garden?” your wife says. “It looks peculiar with slopes on the top”. The next weekend you return to the farm and tractor shop. You explain the problem to the Stihl sales man.  “The wife now wants flat tops”.  There is the familiar sound of the sucking of teeth. “Well, you really have to get up level with the top of the hedge so you can swing the blade from the hip,” the salesman says.

 

The Limping Estate Agents: A Comedy of Gait Errors

 

My son, Rex, has just returned from a skiing week, and, after a bad fall, is limping.  I have just had to take an economy flight at the last moment via Amsterdam, and my back is out as a result.  And so it was, that we agreed to meet a prospective vendor of an historic house yesterday at an outdoor cafe. I noticed, as Rex and I walked along the road from the car park, towards the cafe, that we were both limping on the same leg. Limping in time. In an almost  identical way.  “Rex, could you please try to stop limping, we can’t both be limping!” I said. “I can’t Dad,” he responded, “it hurts too much””.  “Well I can’t stop limping either:.  I explained,  “I’m worried that if we both limp towards her like this that she’s going to think that we have some sort of a genetic defect!”  Rex then ascertained that if we could saunter really slowly he could hide his limp. So we both started a very slow saunter, but with me still limping. Much as you might expect the gestapo on the sitcom Allo Allo to do when approaching you. With some menace. Unfortunately, when we were still some 100 yards out from the cafe, the prospective vendor looked up, smiled, and waved to us from her cafe table. We now had a terrible dilemma. We could either both quicken the pace, with a pronounced identical limp, risking the genetic disability implication. Or, we could continue a nonchalant saunter, with menace, towards her, and take ages to reach the table. Both of us with big smiles on our faces, to acknowledge that we had seen her. Perhaps risking her concern that we might actually be simple.  You will be pleased to hear, that despite my concerns, she has decided to list a fabulous historic  country house with us, even though she has previously seen many other agents.

Now, this is the point. The big agents are always quite quick to copy my innovations, whether it be open houses in 2001 or launch previews in 2002. Especially if the innovation appears to be taking market share from them. So if you happen to call out one of the big agencies to your house, within the next couple of weeks, and you spot a pair of estate agents sauntering slowly up your driveway towards you, with a menacing limp, you’ll know exactly what is going on.

 

The Pinstripe Predicament

 

The most serious problem with having high profile dementia ridden leaders is that the children immediately start looking for signs in their parents. I had finished polishing my black leather shoes, which were still slightly wet, and so I decided to put some rubbish out whilst waiting, being careful to hold the bag away from my pin striped suit. I slipped into my track shoes. On returning to the front door I met a son in the corridor. “Oh no Dad, you cant wear white trainers with a pin striped suit, you cant go out on viewings like that”.
“But these are the only shoes which are comfortable!” I responded, trying to sound crest fallen. “Dad, you look like a vagrant” he said, alarmed. It was then he spotted my drying polished shoes on the front door mat

Each morning Rex and I will go through where I am supposed to be and how I’m best to get there. A viewing at Collingham Road at 10.30, by tube, meeting at Annabels at 12.00 with the Italian enquiry, train to Maidenhead for the viewing at Gibraltar Lane at 3.30pm.

Of course, I have written the full list of appointments in my diary the night before, and Whatsapped all the vendors and viewers as a reminder they should be there. But its a useful exercise for Rex to see how the diary is coordinated, and so I pop in the occasional, “Oh yes, that’s right”.
I remember well, having to entertain two high energy boys home from boarding school. Trips across France to various locations were always arduous. I used to make one sit in the front, and the other in the back with their mother to stop the shenanigans. The one in the front got the map book and I used to pretend I had no clue where to go unless they called the next turn. They are now both great map readers! Despite having travelled every single major road in England, work as sales director of both Hamptons, and Chestertons, visiting many of their offices, it still pays to say, “I’m not sure I recognise where we are, is there a turning soon!” This ensures the next generation are spatially aware of how the English country towns knit together. With the downside that the conversation inevitably turns to the fact that Dad maybe losing it, and may need to retire soon.

 

How to Lose a Castle in 7000 Men or Less

 

I accidently stumbled across King John’s castle on Sunday, or at least its ruins.

King John started building this fortified house, Odiham Castle, in 1208, probably because it was a day’s ride from his castle at Windsor, and then another day’s ride to the castle at Winchester. Shortly after he completed a somewhat splendid house, it was attacked by a bunch of French Knights. I’m not sure of the collective term for French Knights, let’s call them a scarper of French Knights. Which must have been incredibly annoying when you consider the enormous angst, interminable delays, and cost over runs with architects, that one generally suffers when trying to build a house in the English Countryside. Fortunately he wasn’t home at the time that the scarper of 140 Knights and 7000 men attacked, because that would have been even more incredibly annoying. John was at Winchester. His household of 13 held off the scarper for a week before surrendering. Possibly they were running low on beer and wine.

The castle was repaired and extended by Simon de Montfort and his new wife Eleanor (Henry the 111s sister) in 1238. Who, like most new wives, insisted on a new kitchen, but short of room, placed it over a bridge above a moat.

By the 1600s the house had fallen into ruins and In 1792 the Basingstoke Canal was built through the southern corner of the bailey.

The castle is now owned by the Basingstoke Canal authority, part of the County Council. Perhaps no other house in England has ever seen such a fall from grace? Although all credit to them, they did undertake a program of restoration of the keep with English Heritage in 2007.

It’s strange what you come across when undertaking a trek between country pubs on a drizzly and muddy Sunday afternoon.  Part of the charm of an English Sunday walk is to find your way across byways via slippery paddocks and canal and river towpaths to the next village pub. By the time I arrived at Greywell, a delightful strip of Georgian village houses alongside the Fox and Goose pub, facing open fields, I was caked in wet mud from heel to knee. So we just went home and watched Netflix instead. Not an untypical English Sunday winters afternoon.

 

Cuthbert vs. The County Council

 

The Friday evening drive along the A303 is still awe inspiring after 22 years. The road is the same, as is the setting sun, bang in the middle of the windshield. But its clear as to why the builder of Stonehenge, lets call him Cuthbert, sited England’s most famous monument here, at the most elevated point of southern Wiltshire. Surrey was far too pretentious. Non of the neighbours would agree to a development of this nature near their village. Berkshire, being bordered by the Thames, from one end to the other, was prone to flooding, and besides the county had some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. The Cotswolds may have been a suitable choice owing to the abundant availability of building stone, but it was also very twee and full of weekend Londoners opposing any newcomers or indeed change near their village. There was no elevated place close enough to the gods worthy of such a monument in Buckinghamshire.  Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire were also far too flat and boring. Hampshire had some good sites but the land was prohibitively expensive, much of it tied up in great estates, and the local authorities specialised in holding up planning applications for years with frivolous objections. Dorset and Devon had some good elevated sites with building stone but were simply far to far from civilisation, as were many of the local inhabitants. Sussex, Kent and Essex all posed the high risk of theft of building materials from the building site. Southern Wiltshire on the face of it, with its grand, wide, open, sweeping and majestic landscapes, closer to god than many of the surrounding counties, seemed to have the most promising spot. The only issue was the large number of unemployed greenies in Wiltshire who had nothing better to do other than to object to the construction of Stone Henge because of a potential permanent irreversible harm to the broader landscape, including where the spoil was to be dumped, the carbon budget of the whole scheme, and the difficulty that emergency services would have reaching victims in the case of an accident during construction.

However, Cuthbert prevailed. Wiltshire now has a mysterious heritage site hailed as a testament to human ingenuity, imagination and creativity. Many academics have  argued over the last 4000 years as to its purpose. If Cuthbert hadn’t underestimated the cost of labour in Wiltshire, run out of financing, and abandoned the building project half way through,  it might have become more obvious as what is was to be used for. Although we might never know, the residents are pleased to have it.

 

Politeness Overload: A Birdwatcher’s Breakdown

I have attempted to record N.Z. birdsong.  I say attempted, because, as many of you will know, New Zealanders (Kiwis) are an especially friendly and welcoming people. When Kiwis first hear your accent they immediately want to know where you are from, and no matter how obscure a place-name you respond with, you will then have to hear about their overseas trip, in 1970, which must have passed close by to your village. When you have been up for two days flying, and are feeling queasy from an airline breakfast of boiled sausage on rubbery egg, against your own inclination, and smell like a blocked drain, someone’s back packing holiday is the last thing that you want to hear about. At the coffee shop just off at 6am flight from Doha, when asked what I would like, I’m always tempted to say “flat white, in silence, please”. Of course, by the end of your trip to N.Z. you are quite relaxed, saying hello and waving at random people you wont ever see again. Something which must stop immediately you board the train from Heathrow, lest the young lady opposite thinks you are on day release and haven’t taken your pills.  And so it was that my sister and I stood behind the Pauahatanui boat sheds trying to record a Tui bird. The first man who passed, mid camera pan said, “Hi, are you trying to record the Tui, good luck with that then”. On my second filming attempt a lady passing said, “hello, let me try and stay out of your way…”  After a dozen interupted panning attempts my sister suggested that we should give up on trying to record bird song and instead play a spliced video of random Kiwi greetings. “I worry that trying to record bird song here isn’t good for your blood pressure”, she said  helpfully.  “I’m not getting angry”, I responded through greeted teeth. The Tui bird started to sing its iconic song again.  As I started to record, a sprightly old lady was approaching who was bound to want to chat. I had to resist the urge not to push her into the inlet. Here then is a video with birdsong, but missing the iconic Tui, and with a distinct hello greeting about half way through.