It’s wheeled onto the green tarmac – a Klingon war vessel ready to strike fear into the heart of the earth. With a sparkling chrome handle, it’ll be like riding a kids bike. Oil and petrol are checked there’s still the odour on my hands as I wrap a claw around the toggle and pull the beast into life. Tense up those muscles and throw a jerky pull back, it emits a few splutters but no roar. Another attempt and it catches, the two stroke chugs into a throaty roar from a grandmothers cackle. The engine now singing like an ultra light aircraft ready to duel with shades of leafy green.
The blades spin like an unfriendly helicopter upside down and start to slaughter the grass. Eating it up blade by blade gobbling grassy arms. The catcher accumulates a compost of shred – green life blood leaching out forming a ferment of grassy liquid at the bottom of the tray, tasting just the way grass does when it’s nipped from the ground and chewed between incisors on a tepid spring day. The engine buzzzzzawwws as it encounters resistance and retains its relative pitch in quick jumpy steps. The motor coughs out a mixture of oil and petrol fumes, that have an allure about them , but need to be avoided. The grass vacuum cleaner shreds and dices and leaves a platter of smooth green where birds and insects will dine later….