Today I turned into my own worst enemy. A (fuuuuuuccckkkkkiiiiinnnngggg) leaf-blower. You know those things. The curse of every suburb. Leafy Britain’s collective wake-up call. WHHHHHRRRRRRRRRR…!!!!! at the crack of 08:00:03 every day from spring to… well back to spring really because there’s always something to blow around the garden to kill half an hour (30 minutes = £12.50, ker-ching) and it sounds like you’re really productive.

But mine is the ‘green’ special. It burns no fossil fuels (directly). No tree-frogs died in its manufacture. It has a zero carbon footprint, and mine is as much carbon as the mud I leave on the floor. If Greta Thunberg blew leaves, this blower is the one she’d use. Though she probably eats them.

It’s electric, you see. Which we ‘decided’ upon for reasons of ecology, sustainability, environment, emissions and that it was much cheaper. Not necessarily in that order. And, unlike every other electric garden tool I’ve left lying in a heap with a severed power cord, it has no blades! Therefore can’t kill me. Like my original hedge trimmer nearly did. The only tragedy is that it is much quieter than its petrol-driven cousin. And I wanted revenge more than I wanted a leaf-free driveway, let the truth be known.

But best of all, or possibly worst of all, (I’ll confirm in due course), this machine sucks and dissects as well as blows. So you blow the leaves into a little pile and then at the turn of a switch you suck them up into a little bag. And in between the leaves get mashed into nothings. Pulped. Blended. Killed. Amazon delivered it in 2 days and I’ve already blown a leaf. Just to try it. Blown and sucked to death. Job done. Can’t wait for fucking autumn.

Whatever happened to ‘herd immunity’? Remember that, in the deep, dark days of about 6 weeks ago, the cunning plan to infect so many people that coronavirus just is no longer a threat. Cos we’d all have had it. Oh, we didn’t go that path. Sweden did and the results are catastrophic. People are lining up… to get their coffees. They’re piling up bodies… in bars and restaurants, generally on seats until its gets too busy. And they’re being blonde. To great effect.

Ok, I know that Boris felt if we went that route ‘people would die!!!’ Which they have anyway, but more importantly, that the NHS couldn’t cope.

So we locked down. And it seems to have worked? But there is no way out of lockdown. Because not enough people have now had the virus to make us safe from the dreaded ‘second wave’. So we’re never going back to school/work/accountancy and we never will. Just… IN CASE!!!!

Happy gardening. Forever.

A xxxx