Inspiration comes from my own ‘Splendour in the Grass’

MY old mate Doug from the Styx slammed his ute to a halt in the middle of Patearoa’s main street and yelled out, ‘‘What’s the story?’’

‘‘What’s the story?’’ is a multipurpose greeting used in the country. It can be a genuine inquiry about a matter already known to the conversationalists; an aggressive opening to a debate between two opposing factions; a quick request for information about just about anything or a general opening to having a yarn.

Not knowing which approach Doug was using, I switched off the lawn mower and went over to the ute where the 16 dogs in the back set up a raucous mixture of barks in which, as usual, open hostility was blended with friendly greeting.

‘‘SHUD UP!!’’ yelled Doug. Probably not directed at me as, so far, I’d said nothing.

‘‘G’day, Doug. What are you on about now?’’

‘‘This lawn mowing. Every time I drive past you’re pushing that pile of scrap metal around your section as though you actually enjoy it. Is lawn mowing your big thing?’’

‘‘Hell, no. I hate it. That’s why I just do only 10 minutes at a time. Takes a week to cover the property. Then I start over again at the first bit where the grass is a foot high again. The grass growth this year is unreal.’’

‘‘Yeah, great isn’t it? Makes a change from droughts year after year. But you’re crazy. I’d drop a couple of sheep off to keep your grass down, but you’d probably give them names and turn them into family pets. I’d never get them back. Why don’t you get a bloke with a rideon to knock the lawn off in half an hour?’’

‘‘Oh, we did a few years ago. But the wife has planted so many trees and shrubs he ended up having to go in circles and figures of eight to avoid them. Said he got dizzy. Drove into the fence a couple of times and admitted he’d have to give it up. Then the neighbour’s children had a go with their dad’s mower but they’ve been off to boarding school the last few years. So I do it now. But it’s a bit of exercise as well as my means of inspiration.’’

‘‘Inspiration? What for? A cold one over at the pub?’’

‘‘Well, yes, but there’s more to it than that. It’s inspiration for writing stuff. Comes when you’re doing mindless things like lawn mowing. All us great writers need our Muse and mine is the grass.’’

‘‘Good God! You don’t smoke that stuff, do you?’’

‘‘No, wouldn’t touch it. It’s mowing the stuff that inspires me. Ten minutes behind the mower is usually enough to give me an idea, so then I switch off the machine and get behind the keyboard. Wordsworth was just the same.’’

‘‘Wordsworth? We did him at school. Always on about daffodils. Sounded like a bit of a ponce. Not your style, is it?’’

‘‘Hell, no. But he was the great poet of lawn mowing. He wrote, ‘Though nothing can bring back the hour/Of splendour in the grass, glory in the flower/We will grieve not; rather find/Strength in what remains behind.’ It’s in his ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. Did you do that at school?’’

‘‘No fear. Title sounds longer than the poem. Daffodils was enough for us.’’

‘‘Well, in the ode he wrote about ‘splendour in the grass’ after he became the first man in the Lake District to own a lawn mower. The machine had just been invented by a bloke called Edwin Budding in Gloucestershire, just down the road.’’

‘‘Hang on. Splendour in the Grass? That was a film. I saw it years ago. That Natalie Wood was a bit of all right. No lawn moving with her, though. She was into getting her share, wasn’t she?’’

‘‘Something like that. Although the critics described her as ‘a teenage girl navigating her feelings of sexual repression, love, and heartbreak’.’’

‘‘Same thing. Good looker. Didn’t her old man do her in?’’

‘‘Jury’s still out on that, Doug. You must be bit of a film buff.’’

‘‘No fear. Just that I was getting into chasing girls when that film came out and I thought she’d do me. Not really the sort of sheila we had in Patearoa in those days. Well, I better shove off.’’

This was Patearoa’s rush hour and a tractor and a milk tanker were waiting patiently for Doug to move his ute.

As he lurched off, he called out, ‘‘Sorry to have buggered up your Muse. Ha! Ha!’’

‘‘No worries, Doug,’’ I replied. ‘‘I’ve just had an inspiration for next week’s column.’’

‘‘Natalie Wood’s sexual repression? Look forward to it.’’

‘‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’ll just do one on the filmloving farmer and lawn mowing.’’