The Lawnmower Man

It's pretty damned hard to get a job at the moment. Not that I need one; I'm lucky. But I know more than a few who would like to get paid for their endeavours. 'Work experience' is all the rage if you're school age. If you've got a degree, then it's often a full forty hours a week for the honour of being able to show a company how good you are even without the incentive of a few pennies in your pocket.

"I remember when I were a lad", pretty much anyone who wanted to could get a Saturday job. Not these days...there's probably a week long residential course just to see if you're suited to stacking shelves. Such is life under the economic cosh.

The Boy and The Cat have occasional baby-sitting duties amongst friends and family to help them afford the little luxuries that they can't scrounge off me or The Cat's Mother. They get paid handsomely for their troubles, but still they come cap in hand.

For UP's 50th birthday, The Boy and I got him a lawnmower. Silence to all those who say it's the equivalent of getting a woman a blender for her anniversary present. What's wrong with that? He needed one and very fine it is too. It came with a little addition. The Boy. Now, for a small sum every fortnight, The Boy gets to mow UP's lawn. He started on Saturday, and made not a bad job of reducing the jungle to something that would only make the groundsman at Wimbledon blush only slightly.

I felt the need to photograph this momentous event. After all, mowing a lawn is something that every man should be able to do. What I can't figure out though, is why he felt the need to do it hopping.



If only we'd had Tom Jones to help us out