By

Craig Ennew

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Thirty: Channelling Alan

This week: that lawn’s not going to mow itself!

My wife and I stare at the plug socket nervously. ‘Are we sure about this?’ I ask. She remains eerily quiet, but I see her eyes move from the plug to trail along a black cable which disappears into the dark recesses of the building. One false move and everything could blow. Who is going to flick the switch? This is all so Line of Duty.

Handsome Horticulturalist: Alan

We are inside The Shack at West Lulworth, crouching in the space that will become ‘the guest bedroom’. The cable stretches the width of the building, through the wall frames and towards the window in the far corner. Here, it runs through a scary-looking electric box thing, which in turn connects to a multi socket doobrey, from which a 30 metre cable reel runs outside. This lead hangs precariously from the front window to skip over the little terrace, dangle down seven feet onto the garden lawn, to unravel thirty feet or so to where it finally attaches to our cheap orange lawn mower. The property is not, as yet, properly connected to the electricity grid; but we figured that if this Heath-Robinson set-up was good enough to power the kettle for Will the Builder’s Pot Noodle, then it might also work for our mower. Therefore, we’ve traced the tangle of wires round the building, and linked up our Flymo in what we hope is a similar configuration. Now, the plug sits squat like an unexploded grenade. With protruding finger, I jab at it, resigned to emerge from the encounter looking like Doc from Back to the Future…

Potential: the garden of The Shack, West Lulworth

Jaw-dropping

When we first viewed The Shack, it was the garden that sold it for me. We knew that there was a whole bunch of work that needed to be done on the building. But we also knew, from the estate agent’s pictures that, looking out, you were greeted with some jaw-dropping views over the top of the village toward Bindon Hill. The pictures, though, had not done justice to the garden.

As with most mid-century bungalows, the garden of The Shack wraps around the building. Because it is situated on a steep slope, the land drops over many levels with all manner of pathways, steps and wobbly handrails leading here, there and everywhere. There is a scattering of rickety sheds, some flowerbeds that seriously need de-weeding, and all sorts of little nooks and crannies. If you’re into Hide-and-Seek, this is the garden for you – although I would add that you seriously need to grow up. We have a lot of plans – and I mean a lot of plans. I picture us of a Summer’s evening, sitting on the yet imagined veranda, glass of rosé in hand, looking down on a Shangri-La that is festooned with bobbing fairy lights and back-lit rockeries. As yet, we are some way off this vision.

Drivel

I will be the first to admit that I am no Alan Titchmarsh.  This is something of a pity because Alan, as I have known for some time, is my wife’s secret crush.

‘Really?’ I ask incredulously when I first learn of this unexpected attachment. ‘Are we talking about the Alan Titchmarsh? The Alan Titchmarsh who gardens wearing long-sleeved shirts rolled up past the elbow and unbuttoned half-way down his palid, hairless chest? Or the Alan Titchmarsh who croons over pastoral scenes of Olde England whilst playing clichéd drivel on Classic FM? Or even the Alan Titchmarsh who gurns with false modesty on The One Show while Alex Jones fawns over his latest ‘novel’, The Randy Landscape Gardener Murders? Or are we actually talking about the Alan Titchmarsh whose lick-spittery when kowtowing to anything that smells remotely of royalty comes second only to that ghastly Gollum doppelganger, Nicholas Witchell? Hmm?’

My wife had adopted a hurt expression.  ‘Don’t be horrible,’ she says. ‘He’s a nice man.  I like him…’

To this day, I remain bitterly disappointed in her that she has set the bar this low –  that, in short, this defines her taste in the opposite number – a selective body of men to which I assume to belong.  If it were Monty Don, then I might understand – or even Tommy Walsh, if you like your frolics in the potting shed a little more on the rough side.  But Alan Titchmarsh?  Jeez.

So whilst being partial to the odd episode of Gardener’s World or The Chelsea Flower Show, I don’t consider myself particularly green of finger. I leave the management of plants, flowers and other things with a pulse to my wife. I, on the other hand, am the one responsible for hard landscaping. And The Shack offers me plenty of challenges there. There is the removal of that might chicken coop to begin with (see Post Twenty-Three: Why Did the Chicken Jump on the Trampoline). This, in turn, will leave a substantial area of partly-concreted flat ground that my wife has earmarked for some manner of ‘kitchen garden’. We plan to keep the adjoining greenhouse, but it needs some TLC. Beyond this area, there is an impenetrable patch of undergrowth where the back fence and trestle has toppled over and an ungainly giant shrub’s thick, gnarly branches have crawled their way through. We want to reestablish a path that runs diagonally down to the bottom corner where a gate leads out to a public footpath. We also want to ‘fortress’ the front area backing onto the road to keep the West Lulworth vampires at bay.

My wife has assigned these initial clearance jobs to our imminent Summer break. Given we’re abroad for over two weeks of this, I’m thinking this might be a tad ambitious. We already have a sofa-bed, a dismantled flat-pack double bed, a giant trampoline, a cooker and a fridge-freezer discreetly hidden in hedges around the garden.  Soon there will be the garden waste – already forming an unsightly heap smack in the middle of the plot – to factor in too.

For now, I’m making a start with cutting the lawn before the grass makes it to the height of my waist. It seems a relatively sedate and civilised starter.   I tentatively squeeze the handle of the mower,  press the button and, to my utter amazement, it starts!  Jim the Sparky would be proud.  Soon, I am throwing the thing up and down the banks with gusto, sweating like a bastard.  On one occasion, my foot slips on the long, flattened grass, and I’m arse over tit, with the mower rattling on top of my sweaty, heaving frame.  I scrabble to me feet, hoping no-one has seen – but there, up on the terrace, The Boy is grinning broadly, taking it all in.  It seems that whenever I happen to stumble upon ineptitude, which is not infrequent, he is there to witness it. 

Gleefully, he trots back to my Wife to report the mishap. 

‘I could have killed myself,’ I bleat, unwrapping untangling the electric cord from around my neck and brushing grass clippings from my new white jeans.

‘You see?’ she says. ‘That would never happen to Alan.’

©Craig Ennew 2025

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