Outward Looking

I concluded that a few of my most recent posts had been too introspective, so I decided that it was time to look out…

…Summer in England.  Bright sunshine that could last for several minutes before the clouds develop and lightning rents the darkling skies.  The entire village is out and about, walking the dog, running, cycling, turning crinkly red before the giant orb dissolves away and the rain starts to lap around the first floor window sills.  The council mowers are butchering the communal grass areas, distributing the grass cuttings together with a thousand different kinds of litter and dog shit across pathways, roads and front gardens from where the gales that precede the coming storm will drive it all into my doorway.

The village is a-hum with serried hedge-trimmers and flashing lights as electric cables are clipped, oaths are muttered and manual clippers are rushed out of the shed, soaked in WD40 and pressed into emergency service.  The village could be back in the 1950’s – if it had ever left them.  Within the hour most hedges are neatly, occasionally precision trimmed and anybody unfortunate enough to have missed this fleeting window of opportunity will find themselves shamed by having something that resembles Miriam Margolyes’ uncoiffed bush surrounding the house.  Sadly, the right weather for future trims may well not occur again until the autumn, by which time wet rot will have beaten you to it. (In the UK, autumn – the season in which the leaves fall off – can occur anywhere between March and November.)

Across the road the man in the corner bungalow takes the opportunity to dead-head his roses.  He does this at root level as it stops the spiky little buggers from coming back again this year.

The bin wagon (or garbage truck as it is known by my grandchildren who watch far too much American YouTube) is meandering along the street collecting the carefully sorted recyclables (glass, tin, paper, certain plastics, soap-opera plots) garden waste (leaves, branches – below the diameter of a thumb – thumbs, cat crap, semi-digested bird, rodents, dead cats) and general trash (everything else, with the one specific exception of anything you really want to get rid of) and depositing them – along with an immovable oil slick – in a single ragged pile in the middle of the road.  If I put the wrong stuff in the wrong bin, they put a label on and refuse to empty it.  If I put the right stuff in the bin, I get to sweep it back up as soon as the truck has gone.

Middle-aged men who previously would have utilized this time by buffing their cars to the kind of finish with which Snow White’s step-mother was best acquainted are now throwing open the doors of the camper van, hoovering out the wildlife, mopping long-forgotten pork pie from the floor of the fridge, airing mildewed sleeping bags over the washing line and chiselling fossilized sausage from the bars of the Calor Gas barbecue.  By mid afternoon they will be ready to go.  It will be snowing.

The woman from next door begins to spray her fence, and I am happy that one side, at least, of my car will not suffer from woodworm for at least twelve months…