Tuesday 30 May 2006

The lawnmower

It began with the lawn. For the first time I'm supposed to take care of a lawn. The house I am renting has quite a bit of lawn... it's not exactly a farm but there's a goodly bit of grass. For this reason, they have a motorized lawnmower. Not the American type where you sit and drive like a small tractor, no, you still shove it around. But it cuts the grass and pulls itself forward while making a lot of noise. Well, when it works.

The landlord's mother showed me where the mower was, and told me that they (she and her brother, I believe) would come back and show me how to start it and use it. But time passed, and the grass grew with breakneck speed. Yesterday I noticed that the lawnmower was standing out on the sand rather than in the shed. I called the landlord's mother, and she confessed to bringing it out while I was at work. She had not managed to start it, though.

Well, I asked permission to try to start it, and went over the startup procedure again over the phone. I then went out and primed it according to the rules, and pulled the start wire. And pulled. And pulled. I pulled hard, I pulled fast, I pulled several times in rapid succession. I could hear the start engine groaning, but the actual combustion engine did not start. I kept at it for a while, but finally gave up. Must be something wrong with the engine.

***

Today as I was about to leave for work, I heard a loud sound outside. I went and looked. It was the lawnmower. And handling it was a little old lady with white hair... the landlord's grandmother. She cheerfully told me that it had started on her first try. She then went on to mow the huge lawn while I was at work.

Remind me to never pick a fight with little old white-haired grandmothers.