I know it is a bold and unpopular thing to say, but I do really like grass. Of course I also like vegetables and I think they should be planted in more public places. Grass definately shouldn’t have such an utterly entrenched position alongside pavements and in parks. Vegetables should feature more. So if you are walking along and feel a little peckish, you can simply pick yourself a bean or maybe dig up and dust off a carrot and have a snack. And everyone would be less hungry. That would be so awesome.
And I know everything should always be indigenous, but it can get a bit fascist being so strict about where things were originally from. And I know people will say oh Jess you are so middle class and also they will say I am bourgeois to like grass. And it is true, I am. But I do really just like its beautiful greenness and how soft and lovely it is. Although it does make some people itchy if they roll around in it. But not me.
My grandparents were very posh and they had the most pristine lawn ever in the history of the world. I have never ever seen such a lawn again in my life. Not even in England. Not even on golf courses or bowling greens. Having this very precise lawn was not easy. Keeping that grass to aesthetic and sensory satisfaction was difficult. Every morning in the winter a whole team of gardeners had to sweep it. Especially if there was frost, or even dew. And I tell my children about how the gardeners cut the edges with nail clippers to get it exactly straight, but they don’t believe me.
But I don’t necessarily love lawns per se, more just flowy greenness on hills. I don’t love blobby angry men without their shirts on mowing the lawn on a Saturday in suburbia either. Even though I totally am bourgeois, this is not a scene I think of with any fondness.
But I do confess to having working class envy, which is deluded and wrong. When I was little and walking to school I was always anxious. And I walked passed houses with grass verges and I would look at the gardeners who would of course be eating mixed fruit jam sandwiches on tin plates because during Apartheid that was what white people always fed gardeners. No one seemed to ask each other if they liked mixed fruit jam. But I guess just presumed it is a good mixture of fruit. Cancelling out any offensive fruit with another. I would look at the gardeners drinking tea in tin cups and see them weeding and eyeing the unruly grass, and simply wish I was them, dealing with grass all day rather than going to school. In my defence I really didn’t understand what a terrible time they were having or about the social and political issues surrounding mixed fruit jam in South Africa in the 1970s. Because I was only seven.
But the thing is, especially at the moment, I still actually wish I was a gardener. I could possibly get away with promoting repetitive weeding from a Buddhist point of view. Or I could from a ultra-upper class superior position of I have understood life. But otherwise, no. If you are rich and have been to university you are expected to at least wish to be horticulturalist or a landscaper. Not just watering and cutting back bushes in a team. You at least have to be the leader of the team. Just like you have to wish to be an architect not a bricklayer, even though I think about bricklaying almost every day. And I know not to romanticise the life of the guy who walks the dogs around Glenwood. Even though on many days I also really wish that was my job. I just can’t believe I didn’t think of it first. Now he has a monopoly and he seems like a better runner than me. Even though I probably love dogs and running with dogs as much as he does.
My friend Ryan is also a very good runner, and I was relieved when he told me he was also struck down by middle class problems related to grass, when he was young. He said that although he was a very fast sprinter he hated the races. And when he was in the ‘on your marks’ position he would look down at the grass and look at the ants on the grass, and just wish he was actually an ant. In that moment he would have preferred to be an ant on a blade of grass. Even though apart from being able to run very fast, he was a South African high jumper.
Anyway there is a lot more to be said about grass – like about walking around on a crunchy hill when it has been burned. An activity available to all echelons. And it seems like all the grass is dead. But it isn’t. Little spikes of green are poking out. This aspect of grass can be very reassuring. But I will save those musings for the next time. For right now I need to look for a job and stop pissing about. If anyone knows anyone who needs a gardener or a dog-walker, please let me know.