It's grey and raining (yea) and I was musing looking out the window at the
grass growing (yea) when I had a flash-back to the lawn mowing skills of a
previous neighbour.

He liked gadgets and is something of an inventor, he could be famous one
day, really. So I shall call him the Inventor. He built all sorts of
interesting things in the garage involving engines, welding, fibreglass and
oil. You could usually tell when he was creating by the smell. He wasn't
much into gardening but used to keep the place looking neat. The duplex
that we shared had concrete paths and driveways, and there were some garden
beds in the lawn. He didn't have a line trimmer so he used to do the edges
with shears and a cranky old wheel-trimmer. One day he had a stroke of
genius and this time his thoughts were well and truly outside the square. I
missed witnessing the feat by a couple of hours but saw the result and was
told all about it.

His wife was drawn out of the house, a rare event presaging matters of
importance, to stand on the verandah to admire his handiwork. He didn't
have to say "honey look what I've done" as she could smell it as the house
filled with smoke. He had gone around the all edges with a watering can of
petrol and then lit it.

He had remembered to get rid of the watering can so it was mainly the edges
of the grass and concrete that burned in a flash however some garden beds
were edged more than usual. Here and there singed rose bushes drooped.
After things cooled and the smog dissipated each section of garden was
outlined in black. Have you ever seen one of those giant human outline
figures cut into hillsides in some parts of the world? This was much like
that but with excessive eye shadow.

The Inventor had a spare car which we once borrowed when ours was in for
extended service. We had been driving it for a day or two when we went to
put petrol into it and found that it had no petrol cap but a ball of rag
stuffed into the filling pipe. We had been driving a Molotov cocktail
around. When we returned it he explained that this was due to the
unavailability of petrol caps for the model which also explained why the car
wasn't registered. Not having noticed that it wasn't registered I nodded
thoughtfully as I thanked him for his generosity.

On the day of the great lawn edging we came home to find the Molotov
cocktail parked in the driveway. I have since wondered if it was there at
ignition time or if it had been removed and returned. I never asked as his
wife assured us that the experiment would not be repeated.

David