I like gardening. I have a real green finger and an eye for what flowers and bushes will complement each other. In my not so humble opinion I had one of the best gardens on the street. Not only that, my front lawn was immaculate. Flat as a snooker table and just as green, with nary a weed to be seen. Our local council had this better gardens award and I had high hopes of winning it this year.
Please note that I'm not a professional gardener. It's just a hobby, but one that brings me quite a bit of pleasure. The garden award, by the way, wasn't worth any money. The winner got a little plaque and, maybe, a gift voucher from one of the local nurseries.
So now you know one of my likes. Here's one of my pet peeves. People who do something that they know they shouldn't, screw up royally and then try to cover up, often expecting their victims to help them cover up. (Politicians are really good at this, but this story is not going to be about a politician.)
Tom, the bloke across the road had a four wheel drive. It's not one of the standard annoying 4WD's you see buzzing around in suburbs where they have no need to be. This was a serious vehicle, the sort that explorers would want to use when driving up Mount Everest or taking a little jaunt across the Antarctic. This was a 4WD with muscle, and Tom loved that car, taking it on a lot of off road motoring jaunts. I have to admit, he was a superb driver.
Moving on to the next subject, global warming. We'd been suffering a drought, and some of our idiot politicians were sold on global warming, convinced that a weather Armageddon was on its way. "We're going to be suffering permanent drought" one of these idiots was spouting off.
I'd love to hear what he has to say right now. It'd just been raining for a solid week, our dams were filling rapidly and the ground is saturated. I assume that out politicians will now tell us we're in for permanent floods.
Now you're probably wondering how I'm going to bring all these elements together to form a story. Well, it was like this.
I was sitting in the front room on a Saturday afternoon, having a beer and watching my team lose the football, pack of useless wankers that they are. It was a nice sunny day for a change, but those clowns on the field were almost knee deep in mud. Sooner them than me, I assure you.
In the background I could hear Tom revving the motor of his 4WD, which was a bit unusual. I idly thought that there must be something wrong with it and he was testing it out. Finally it occurred to me that the revving engine was just a bit too loud. If I could hear it that loudly from my front room, Tom must have just about been revving the guts out of it.
So I wandered out to see what was going on. What was going on was Tom's fucking great 4WD was sunk almost to the axles in a muddy swamp that used to be my front lawn. I could see great gouging wheel marks across my nature strip, through a couple of low bushes, across my garden and onto my lawn.
Even as I watched the stupid vehicle surged forward, there was a crash of gear as it was put into reverse, and the engine roared as the driver slammed on the accelerator. Apparently this time was the lucky one that did the trick. The wheels finally gripped, flinging great divots of mud and lawn around and the 4WD backed off my lawn, further mangling my garden. It paused for a second on the edge of the road and then shot across the road and into Tom's drive.
In the silence that followed the shutting down of the 4WD I heard a little car pull up. The council's garden inspector pulled up outside and sat looking at my award winning mud pie. He looked over at where I was standing and gave me a helpless little shrug. What could I do? I just spread my hands helplessly, he gave a wave and my potential award drove away.
I looked over the road to Tom's place. In my opinion the mud patch in my front yard just needed some decent fertiliser to assist a brand new lawn to grow. Tom's body would sink into that mud and no-one would ever notice, or even miss the bastard.
While I watched, the door to the 4WD pooped open and little Sharon, Tom's wife, hopped down. Up until then I'd always thought she was a nice young woman. Fun, and rather flirty. Now my opinion wasn't expressible in mixed company.
She came wandering over to me, turned, and looked at the damage.
"That thing is harder to drive than I thought," she said with a laugh. "It's made a bit of a mess of your lawn, hasn't it."
I looked at her.
"A bit of a mess," I said, trying desperately to keep a civil tone when I wanted to jump up and down, ranting.
"Um, I'll be happy to buy you some more lawn seed," she said.
How nice. I wondered if she'd be happy to supply all the hours of work that would be required to fix the problem.
"Um, I'd just as soon you didn't mention this to Tom," she said. "I'm not supposed to drive his car and he'd kill me if he found out."
"Really? And where is Tom right now? I suspect he may notice the mud on the car."
"Oh, he's away for a few days. I'll just hose the car down and wash the mud off. The forecast is for more rain tonight and tomorrow so that'll help was the mud of the path."
How nice for her. More rain coming down on that mud-pile out front just might make my house sink into it, never to be seen again.
"Ah, you're not upset, are you. I know you like gardening and it'll give you something to do."
"Why should I be upset. I might have missed out on the gardening award for the year, and have a lot of hard work ahead of me fixing the damage, but I look on the bright side. I haven't been arrested yet for killing you."
Sharon blinked at that.
"You are upset, aren't you? I suppose this means that you're going to tell Tom."
"Well it's either tell Tom and let him deal with you or drag you inside and beat your bottom like a big bass drum, so it seems that yes, I will be telling Tom."
Sharon promptly got all huffy.
