One of the reasons I love the winter is that grass doesn’t grow. This means that you can mow the lawn just before it gets cold and not need to do it again for months. When I do mow the lawn I’m not enjoying it. And I don’t think to myself how lovely it’ll look when it’s nice and short. The only reason I do it at all is because (a) my girlfriend nags me to the point of madness and (b) the neighbours nag me to the point of madness.
I suppose I could cope with having to cut the grass every couple of weeks. But the grass where I live is in terrible condition and has always been 90% weeds and moss, with 10% grass – and not very good grass at that. Actually, here’s a question: why do puny kids at school get called weeds? Weeds are the most hardy and versatile of all plants and are virtually impossible to kill. Surely the school tough guys should be called weeds… Anyway, back to my rant. Even if I do cut the grass, it leaves massive bare patches that cats like to use as a toilet. So I can’t win.
My neighbours have, or had, the same problem. They’ve all killed off the grass, laid down plastic sheets, and put small gravel-type stones down. Very nice it looks too. Late last year I decided that I was going to do the same thing. By the time I could be bothered to think about actually doing it we were in the middle of autumn and it was raining all the time. So I decided to leave it until the weather got warm again after the winter. And here we are. The garden’s overgrown again and there’s even a thistle this time (I feel like I’m back in Scotland again). Anyway, it’s getting out of hand so I’m going to have to do something about it. I’m going to use the weed killer my girlfriend bought me 6 months ago to kill everything. And then I’m going to put plastic and then stones down. And then I don’t have to touch it again. Job done. I’ll do it at the weekend.
On a more positive note, my injured toe is almost healed. I can walk properly and can even run. I can’t kick a football properly with my left foot yet (as if I ever could) although I can still catch the ball behind my neck – true, you don’t really need to use your feet for that. So hopefully I’ll get back to playing by the end of next week.
On the subject of football, I’ve decided to support France during the world cup. Being Scottish I’d find my passport revoked if I were to support England (and my family would disown me) so I had to wave the flag for somebody else. I was tempted to Spain as I’m a big fan of Real Madrid, but I just couldn’t resist the “Auld Alliance” tie between Scotland and France. I’ve bought the shirt and I’m ready to cheer them on. So with that decided my June and July should be a lot more bearable. And as most of England’s first team seem to be injured I don’t really see them going on to win it anyway (although meeting France in the second stage would be nice).
