Petrol- daily Object Writing- Sept 16

Sep 15th, 2009 | By admin | Category: Daily Writing

The two stroke is gargling its way across the lawn when it coughs and hiccups and then splutters to a stop The lid -which looks like a sea shell – is screwed off and an eye looks into a hollow cave of muted metal – empty- nada- nothing. Petrol vapours ring chimes in the orchestra of his smell bank. He heads to his garage where a door yawns open on oil-less hinges – ‘must fix that’ – he thinks to himself. The five litre tin is retrieved and its off to the servo on the main street.

The bowsers all stand round waiting. They’re like question marks, the long snakey tubes appended to their sides as if they are that statue ‘the thinker’. The silvered tin clinks onto the concrete and he lifts the handle, the machine begins whirring and clicking in anticipation, and as gently as a reverse park he squeezes the teat, syphoning in just enough without overflow – that would be messy. His hands now have a light reek of oily petrol. Inside he pays and then returns to the task of lawn clipping.

Getting out of the car the smell of fresh mown grass greets him and sends him straight back to playing in the park near the house he grew up in. When the big tractor was doing the rounds with the clipper, chug-a-lugging around the field collecting the clippings in a hopper and dumping it into a mulch pit. In the garage…….

Share and Enjoy: