The Politically Incorrect Guide To Teenagers by Nigel Latta

Author:Nigel Latta [Latta, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Non Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2011-10-14T11:00:00+00:00

Step 3: What needs to happen to get there?

A few years ago we had a man deliver a load of woodchips for the garden. The idea was that I would spread the woodchips on top of the garden to stop weeds from growing. I hate gardening with a passion. I resent it to the very core of my being. I’d rather be reading a book, or watching telly, or just lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. Because of my bitter hatred for all things to do with gardens, anything that stops weeds is good with me.

‘How much would you like?’ the little man on the phone had asked when I was ordering it.

‘Ummm, I reckon about five cubic metres should do it,’ I said confidently. It didn’t sound that much when I said it, really that was just five large boxes.

It was actually a very large truck that turned up, and the little man was not so little either. He was actually quite a big man, but not in a good way, more in a too-many-burgers-and-too-much-beer kind of way.

‘There y’are, mate,’ he said after he’d finished tipping the truckload of chips onto our drive.

I felt sick. It was an enormous pile, so big in fact that it was more like a geological feature. It looked as if you’d need oxygen bottles to get to the top. I expected to see base camps sprout on our lawn, replete with Sherpas and yaks. At night, yetis would come down from the snowy heights and carve obscenities on our fence. My sons’ sons’ sons would still be labouring away to get this mountain of woodchips spread on the garden. I was a little overwhelmed, to say the least.

I shifted three wheelbarrow-loads and it looked exactly the same. At that point I realized it was probably better to kill myself rather than spend the rest of my life shifting woodchips. I hadn’t signed on for this.

Just at that moment, a friend rang up. When he heard about my pile of chips, he was more optimistic. Shortly after that he turned up with his wheelbarrow and shovels.

‘Let’s get cracking,’ he said.

I tried to tell him there was no point trying, that we were almost certainly going to die on this mountain, but it was pointless. He’d already disappeared around the back of the house with a full wheelbarrow.

Because sitting around whining like a Big Jessie seemed less than manly in the face of all this enthusiastic action, I filled my own wheelbarrow and set about it. We’d be dead by lunchtime, of that I was sure, but at least I’d die on my feet.

Actually, we were finished by lunchtime, not dead but spread. The mountain of woodchips was safely dispersed over the garden and there was only a little sweeping left to do. My back hurt, but the job was done. I knew that if I’d been there on my own I would still have been sitting around feeling sorry for myself and trying to come up with clever plans to shift it without me actually having to do any work.

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