{"id":658,"date":"2008-05-27T12:42:30","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T11:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/?p=658"},"modified":"2008-05-30T14:31:05","modified_gmt":"2008-05-30T13:31:05","slug":"i-mowed-the-lawn-and-the-lawn-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/2008\/05\/27\/i-mowed-the-lawn-and-the-lawn-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"I mowed the lawn and the lawn lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Google says that I’m not the first person to use this “I fought the lawn…” pun in a blog post title. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.*<\/p>\n

Back in March, we had a lawn installed<\/a>. As the grass gradually got longer and longer, we realised that we could not delay the purchase of a lawn mower any further.<\/p>\n

It’s not a very large area, so I didn’t want to go spending huge amounts of money on a lawnmower. But, conversely, I also had requirements. I wanted something that would collect the grass shavings for me, and I also wanted to avoid the Flymo brand, as they are basically all cheap, shoddy, flimsy pieces of orange plastic tat.<\/p>\n

Stood in my local Focus<\/a>, I contemplated the options. On my left, I had a Bosch electric rotary mower that met my requirements, costed about \u00c2\u00a360, and would take up a significant amount of space in the garage, when the garage is full enough already.<\/p>\n

\"Qualcast<\/p>\n

Qualcast Panther 30<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To my right, I had the Qualcast Panther 30<\/a> for about \u00c2\u00a340 ((you can currently get it from Argos<\/a> for just \u00c2\u00a330)).<\/p>\n

I ummed and ahhed for a long time, while Karen ran around the store chasing a toddler who had a surplus of energy. I had mental images of blazing hot afternoons, sweat pouring down my body, red in the face, grunting and heaving and screaming “fucking piece of shit lawnmower!”<\/p>\n

But then I suppressed my preconceptions and thought about it rationally. I thought about my hodddd and how much simpler and easier it is to sweep the carpet using the hodddd than the vacuum cleaner. I thought about dynamo-powered bicycle lights, and how modern ones are far less intrusive than their old-fashioned counterparts. I thought about how much easier the hand-powered lawn mower would be to store and transport. The reduced risk of accidents. The additional exercise. The lower purchase price. Bernard screamed past at a few hundred miles per hour, with Karen in hot pursuit. She suggested that if I wanted to make a decision any time soon, that was okay with her.<\/p>\n

A few hours later I was in the back garden, sweat pouring down my body, red in the face, grunting and heaving. But I wasn’t screaming “fucking piece of shit lawnmower”. Because I knew that it wasn’t the lawnmower’s fault. It was the fact that this lawnmower is totally unsuitable for cutting long grass, and this came as no surprise.<\/p>\n

Once the grass is down to a reasonable length, this thing actually whizzes over the lawn with impressive speed and agility. I’m the kind of guy who is willing to go out and mow the lawn once a week, and so I have a good feeling about this. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Google says that I’m not the first person to use this “I fought the lawn…” pun in a blog post title. Ah well, you win some, you lose some.* Back in March, we had a lawn installed. As the grass gradually got longer and longer, we realised that we could not delay the purchase of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[376,377,378],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening","tag-lawnmower","tag-qualcast","tag-qualcast-panther-30"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pete.nu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}