SALLY...PART 184. I DIDN'T MEAN TO KILL THE LAWN !

DEAD....AND NEVER CALLED ME MOTHER !

I've been listening to, "I HATE this self-heal and the way it's invading the lawn !" for years and watched my wife choosing a different place to lie down and rest on following another hideous night's sleep in order to pull out and make another pile of the plants before leaving them to rot on the lower step of our descent into the garden from my room !

So one day, two months ago, when she was away for a week or two I impulse bought a huge quantity of 'WEED AND MOSS KILLER WITH ADDED LAWN FOOD' and smothered our few acres with it, little suspecting the devastation I had released would very nearly end my marriage of forty five years !

Had I even had an inkling that that could have been the result I would have bought more...much more of the stuff !

Here's a shot of what greeted my wife's eyes when she returned !

What was even worse was that it stunk to high heaven and rendered the air unbreathable so there was only one thing to do.....HOOVER it up !

So out I went with the VAX and away I went on one of the most ridiculous ventures of my life !

The air was filled with great sobs thundering across the neighbourhood from the back bedroom where my wife had locked herself away, my lungs and nose were filled with the finely ground up particles of POISON that the Vax was spraying in every direction and the machine itself rapidly clogged up with grass every three seconds !

Ten minutes later and sweating like a pig from the effort of trying to push an upright vacuum cleaner over a desolate piece of rough wasteland my cunning plan ground to a halt and having burnt out the motor I crept upstairs to knock quietly on her door and offer an apology....which wasn't accepted !

I even suggested that she tried calming down and would perhaps enjoying returning to the kitchen to cook me some scampi and chips but that quite surprisingly, if I may say so, didn't work and for some unfathomable reason only made things worse and I have yet to try to do with the scampi what she said I could do for all she cared !

She shouted through the keyhole that she had packed her bag and was going back to her mother and there was nothing I could do to stop her but I found that reminding her as calmly as I could that her mother had departed this world many years before worked a treat !

Forward to three days later and after reading EVERYTHING on the internet about lawns and why one should never use weed killer Shirley came downstairs and though still sobbing admitted that there had to be worse things in life though she couldn't think of any and allowed me to reseed and awaited results which actually are pretty amazing.....eight weeks later !

GOD BLESS YOU WILKINSONS ! YOU WERE ABOUT TO SAVE MY BACON !

The Self Heal has all gone, the devastation is a thing of the past and we now have a lawn you can once again lie on and sunbathe....if only we had some sun !

PERFECT....WELL ALMOST !

SALLY...PART 183. THE SHEER MADNESS OF MODERN FITNESS FANATICS !

Three weekends ago my 37 year old son Julian persevered through HELL to compete a in a CITY TO SUMMIT race in Scotland so severe that one wonders why anyone would want to put themselves through it !

Here are the details for historic purposes to show his descendents where their toughness stems from !

130 people began the day at 4:30am with a 15 mile run from Queensferry across the Forth Road Bridge back into Edinburgh before riding their bikes for 115 miles towards Fort William and finishing their 19 plus hour days with a FULL MARATON over totally rocky terrain which included climbing and descending Britain's highest mountain Ben Nevis where temperatures at the summit were -5*C !

They cycled and ran through twelve solid hours of gale force winds and rain which hit them full in the face !

All feeling had gone from their extremities and hypothermia was a mere breath away for most of those 40 who managed to finish !

AS you can tell 90 gave up somewhere along the line !

Julian couldn't face the mountain but somehow dug deep and found the extra resources to keep going !

He has since failed to recover fully and is still fighting off a chest infection which I hadn't realised is par for the course for extreme sportsmen and women and thankfully he has decided never to take part in any such thing again !

My wife had followed the ordeal via the internet and nearly burst with pride when Julian's name showed that he had got to the top of Ben Nevis, shouting out, "HE'S DONE IT !" at about 11:15pm !

Naturally his entire family is extremely proud of him but also completely flummoxed by his need to do such things after he had cycled 385 miles in two days a couple of weeks before this madness !

Long may it NOT continue !

(Julian is only in some of the photos...which aren't necessarily shown in the right order !)