Groundforce

 Admit it. You saw the title and you are humming the tune.

 “Doo Doo de boo doop Doo Doo de boo doop Doo Doo dah.”

Everyone loves a gardening show and Groundforce was the first for lazy gardeners. It was the show for people who wanted a nice garden without the work. None of that watching Geoffrey Hamilton plant vegetables and flowers in the same bed, never really knowing which were weeds, or propagating your own Azalea from cuttings stolen from a National Trust garden. No. Groundforce was for people with a problem in their garden that they didn’t have the time or knowledge to fix. Alan Titchmarsh was the chief gardener, shouting at Tommy Walsh for getting builder’s sand on the beds, while Charlie Dimmock, who was, apparently, every man’s fantasy - a woman with hair and breasts - laid a patio and built a water feature in an afternoon. 

Last night I went to book club and the general opinion was that we read more gardening books than anything else, so naturally we chose Japanese dystopian fiction. That’s the way life goes sometimes.

The Long Suffering Husband and I had spent part of the day (after persuading our son to take over pooping landshark duties) being the Groundforce team. My daughter wanted to be able to leave her house, avoiding the crazy neighbour but unfortunately the back gate was broken and the path impossible to navigate.

We knocked on the door, tools in hand.

“We’ve come to clear your back passage,” I said.

No one wants a clogged back passage. It can lead to all sorts of problems.

One huge bag of brambles and some digging, raking and gate mending later and I am happy to report that the Groundforce team have once again fixed the problem.

Not the crazy neighbour, which might need a spell (anyone know a witch?) but there is now a strategy for avoiding the drama. 

As we were putting the things back in the car, the neighbour was skulking around her unmoving horse box. We smiled at the girl who pushed a leaflet through my daughters door and said, ‘Good afternoon.” The neighbour jumped out, hoping to have a baffling conversation with us, only to be confronted by a question from the girl that always seems to confuse her.

“Do you live here?” She beamed.

“No. No I don’t,” the neighbour replied, muttering under her breath something like, “Who told you that?”

“Oh, okay,” the girl said and went to the door.

“Can’t you read?” the neighbour shouted at her.

She shrank back, confused. 

“It’s just about the elections,” she said, turning on her heel and making a quick escape.

Now that the Groundforce team have been in, my daughter will always be able to make a quick and unseen escape. That’s what a clear back passage gives you.