GUTTER-PERCHER

I am up a ladder in the back garden. The garden has been a source of great disappointment to me for many years now. It is 150 square yards of purgatory. The grass won’t grow, no matter how much I coax it. I dig it, I fork it, I hoe it, I rake it, I trowel it. I seed, fertilise and reseed it. I get down on my knees and pray to it. The end result? A lawn with permanent alopecia. It’s all to do with the four huge deciduous trees that were planted 70 years before the house was built. They’re 80 feet high and shut out most of the light, as well as sucking up all the moisture, so that nothing much can grow. What does grow, however, is the micro-garden on the concrete roof tiles. Moss, lichen, algae and sempervivum grow energetically, nourished by the steady diet of leaves, twigs, seeds, fruits and blossom that constantly falls onto the roof from this arboreal quartet. Every time there is a high wind, and the wind hasn’t ceased hereabouts for the last ten days, part of the garden is dislodged from the roof and blown into the gutter, where it lies, ready to clog up the drainage apparatus and ensure that rain does not run away along the downpipes, but runs instead down the inside of the kitchen wall. That is why I am up a ladder in the back garden. It is a laborious task, especially when you only has two left-handed Marigold gloves, in different colours, for protection. I wear the yellow one back-to-front on my right hand and the pink one normally on my left. The process is tedious and repetitive. Place the ladder onto the soffit-boards at an angle of sixty degrees. Wedge the foot of the ladder against the patio wall with a baulk of timber. Ascend the ladder very carefully, bearing in mind the fact that you are a sexagenarian and weigh sixteen stone. Carry up a plastic bag (with handles) and hook it over one leg of the ladder. Scrape the detritus out of the gutter with a sweeping motion of the gloved left hand. Drop the stuff into the bag. Watch the wind blow it out of your hand and all over the ground. Repeat this entire process ten times, moving the ladder along to the left four feet at a time. When finished, replace the ladder and sweep the patio. Then you will have the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile, even though you know you will have to carry out this task every time there is a high wind, and twice as often when the leaves fall in the autumn. I feel like the early golf-balls – a gutter-percher.