Sprinkler

When I arrived home today I saw my neighbour's ute in his driveway for the second day in a row.

My neighbour's name is Charlie and he has an accent like mine. A middle-aged Caucasian, I like him for his quiet greetings and lack of intrusive questions. IMHO, he's the best kind of neighbour to have - friendly and yet barely there.

Another segeway into evening on the Lye driveway.

I waved to him as usual and sang out "Hi Charlie."

And as he greeted me, it occured to me that he probably did have a lawnmower... which I promptly inquired about.

Of course, halfway through my question, I realized that I have no, none, zero interest in mowing my own lawn. WTF. Why the hell did I ask? ...Oh yeah, I remember now - becoz mowing it myself seemed less troublesome than organizing someone to mow it for me....

Turns out, he has a shit-ass mower but his other, middle-aged ute owning friend (who I see sometimes) has a better one and probably wouldn't mind mowing my pathetic patch-o-grass for a minimal fee. Or patch-o-tall weeds, as it really is now.

Ah hah.

Then I thought," hey, he might know the secret behind the reticulation."

And after some fiddling, he did.

Turns out tap needed to be on AND sprinkler knob needed to be on simultanously. Hot damn. The new-fangled shit they'll come up with these days. The courtyard sprinkler system has eluded me for months. I'd been running into my courtyard armed with a bucket (filled at the kitchen tap no less) since moving in here. A foolhardy venture each time as it involved an ungainly dance across my newly laid carpet.

Hmm.

And for one moment there, I kinda wished that I did have neighbours of the old skool variety.

It was nice knowing that I liked the folks next door. Nicer still knowing they didn't mind me.