My new toy

Having wrestled for many years with an electric lawnmower

which required very careful cable management 

and needed an unwieldy extension cord

in order to reach the end of the garden,

I was searching around for a cordless replacement.

Petrol mowers are smelly and noisy

and the new lithium battery cordless mowers

had conflicting claims as to their battery life 

and the length of time needed for re-charging.

They also cost a lot.

I nearly said an arm and a leg but this would have been

in very poor taste as my husband nearly lost a toe to our old one

and I had many an uneasy moment

as I fished around trying to unclog it when the grass stopped 

collecting in the box.

So it was, that I started looking for an old-fashioned

push along mower.

And here it is.

To be sure, the instruction leaflet for assembly

was very poorly, and minutely illustrated

and the adjustments for blade and roller adjustment

are of the fiddly old fashioned spanner, nut and bolt kind,

but once I'd got it set up

it fairly flew round the garden, slicing,rather than mashing the grass

and making a lovely whirring sound, redolent of childhood summers,

listening to my father pushing ours around the garden, 

well into his seventies.

It was lighter and therefore easier to push than our old one,

and because I don't have to keep stopping to unsnag

or rearrange the cable, much quicker to give a cut.

It even produced some faint stripes.

Best of all, it cost just under £50.

A snip.