In Gordon we trust....

Now that we are homeowners (careful!) in France, the work lies stretched out before us with no end in sight. It will be like the Forth Road bridge, once we’ve actually built the bridge. 7 acres of untamed wilderness waiting to be honed into a paradise complete with zones (breakfast, morning coffee, lunch, post lunch nap, book reading, afternoon tea, gin o’clock, dinner, star gazing, growing stuff to eat) With that in mind David and I bimbled over to the garden tool shop in Northampton ready to fill the Landy with petrol powered garden busting paraphernalia. Strimming was high on the list and I stood in awe at the array of machines available for purchase . Why would you need to spend £1000+ on a strimmer? What would it do in addition that a model for £200 wouldn’t do? High powered flossing? Macrame? Dog grooming? Back, sack and crack? Apparently it was all in the attachment potential and options. It’s interesting how different brains look at things. Faced with a strimmer that could be converted via an attachment and some bizarre deployment of inerlocking tools into a 65bhp yard sweeper, David’s brain said “ooooooh spinny attachment thing, must have”, mine said “scary mechanical thing which will outwit me”

Gordon the Garden Tool salesman had us sussed. He stepped in where others would fear to tread. “Guys, I think that we should limit your options to the first three from the left”

What was it that our man bags and perplexed faces conveyed to him which instantly put 18 strimmer models out of our reach for perpetuity? Would we ever be able to graduate onto them?

We were deftly steered to a lovely red model. We both went “ah Honda”, must be good.

“Are you familiar with how to put on a harness boys?” inquired Gordon. Amazingly we took to it and before long we were dry strimming the carpet as if we were born to do it.

Having dealt with strimming, we then needed to move onto log and tree issues of which we have many. The chainsaw department beckoned. A wall of 50 different models stood before us. I heard the music to The Planets in my head as Gordon gestured with a sweep of the arm like one of the dolly birds on a 1980s game show revealing the Mini City E and matching fridge freezer from behind a tinselly curtain.

We stood in awe. We gaped and we contemplated. I think I heard David squeak. Then Gordon spoke,

“Well you’re only going to need to consider three of these machines lads”                

What?! Why? How did he know we didn’t own France’s only giant Sequoia forest? Huh? What if I wanted the one at the far right rather than the one at the far left? After all it was such a sleek looking one with rather a pretty shape to the engine cowling and I just loved the shade of orange….somewhere between a Jaffa Cake and Victoria Beckham.

I don’t know what Gordon the Garden Tool salesmen did as he ran us through different combinations of chainsaws but at the end we were terrified. He talked about chain tightness, chain slackness, chain sharpening, chain lubrication and at that we were in the middle of a chain reaction. We wandered over to the saw section and spent £12.99 on a bow saw. In any case, the pushing and pulling required had to be good for tricep development.

I felt a huge wave of impostor syndrome sweep over me as I loaded up the Landy with my new petrol driven weed basher and related paraphernalia. I also felt a great deal of excitement about being able to do something with my French home that would be meaningful. I’d done enough dreaming. The house had sat amidst a wilderness for almost 70years and it was time to liberate it and give it its rightful personality back.

The next step was to point the Landy towards Dover and crack on…..