Bags of trouble on back lawn

EFxcuse me if this column proves to be a little incoherent, but it’s about 30 degrees Celsius outside and I’m hot and sweaty having just come in from vacuuming the lawn.

Yes, you read that correctly: I’ve just finished putting the vacuum cleaner around the back lawn.

Let me explain. Because it was a very warm day, my wife decided it would be a good time to take her grandson outside to let him play in his paddling pool.

Jill also decided she could relax on her outdoor beanbag while keeping an eye on him. It seemed like a sensible plan – until she sat down on the beanbag and a trillion small white beads came cascading through a split in the side.

Because these polystyrene beads are extremely light, they quickly began to spill over the lawn like an incoming tide.

When Jill raised herself from the now obviously rotten beanbag, another split developed on the opposite side and the white tide surged further over the lawn in the other direction.

Luckily, I realised it was the day for the emptying of our red rubbish bin. We could fill that up and our problem would be solved.

No such luck. The bin hadn’t yet been emptied and, although it was only half full, there was only enough room left to accommodate a fraction of the ‘‘beans’’ we were attempting get rid of.

Soon we were filling up cardboard boxes, buckets and chilly bins and, even when we had removed the bulk of the problem, there were still countless small white balls lurking in the grass. It looked like we were the only property in the district to have had a snowfall on a day of tropical temperatures.

It was at this point that I fetched the vacuum cleaner to suck up the remaining beans. This worked well for about 30 seconds – which was all the time it took for the cleaner bag to become full. Clearly, we needed yet another plan.

ortunately, it was at this time that another member of the family remembered we owned a garden vacuum cleaner with much greater suction power and a bag of much larger capacity. We hadn’t used this cleaner in more than a year, which is why Jill and I had forgotten its existence.

It proved a stroke of genius and, in no time at all, the white tide had been tamed. All that remains now is for us to somehow get rid of several boxes of slightly garden-soiled beanbag balls.

I should point out at this juncture that this beanbag incident was just the second frustration of what was proving a troublesome day.

I had got up earlier, intending to watch some English football. As usual I was planning to stream the broadcast from phone via Chromecast to the TV. But the Chromecast wasn’t working. Not only that, the function had disappeared completely from the television set.

I googled on my phone for an answer to my problem and received all the usual advice – press the reset button, turn off the router, restart the phone.

None of these ‘‘solutions’’ worked, which didn’t altogether surprise me because this is the second Chromecast dongle that has suddenly given up the ghost on me and I had no more success with these methods the first time around.

So, I finished up watching the first half of the game on the tiny phone screen, which was a bit of a frustrating experience because I found it difficult to keep track of the ball.

It almost came as a relief when, just as the halftime whistle went, I was called outside to deal with the beanbag emergency.

At least out there it was easy to see all the balls.