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The lawnmower

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It's not over, this blog, just a long summer break: some service will resume soon.

I remember, as a child, the time each year towards the end of March that my father would pull our unnaturally heavy and unwieldy two-stroke lawn mower out from the back of the garage, dust it off, top it up with petrol, and then try to bring it to life, carefully pulling or pushing the choke, and using a starter cord to wrench the engine into reluctant service. The initial results were invariably fitful, acrid and accompanied by 'dear, dear' and 'let's see' (which was the nearest my father usually came to the kinds of vile imprecation that fill the air when I can't get something to work). Eventually though, after stalling a dozen times, the ill-maintained and little appreciated engine began to run smoothly, and to do its job.

The same, I hope, will be true of this blog and its sister sites.

Postscript. I suppose it should come as no surprise that there is an English site devoted to old lawnmowers (from which the image was taken), but it is, nevertheless, something to wonder at that men—I assume it's mostly men—will celebrate and revere obsolete mechanical equipment in this way (http://www.oldlawnmowerclub.co.uk)


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