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All over Britain a new political wave is sweeping. And riding that wave with surprising agility for a 76 year-old is Cheryl Mainesayle, head of the radical British Lawn Appreciation Society.
An interesting obsession of the British is our love of lawns. Perhaps this is because the landscape is so blighted that little else will grow. Or maybe it is just that the satisfaction we get from admiring the serried ranks of neatly clipped blades helps us forget crime, the government (filed under crime) and the drains. Lawns are all around us. Even in the heart of bustling London, there is green grass. It reaches out and touches the national psyche, a kind of unconscious urge which makes us head for the park if only to sit on a bench and eat indigestable spam sandwiches while pinned to one's seat by a 100 mile an hour gale.
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And the stately homes for which Britain is famed worldwide also lie smuthered under a layer of verdant turf so thick you can get lost in it. Indeed it's a little hard to imagine Blenheim Palace or Chatsworth House looking good with nothing but sand around it - but why? Is there something fundamental about the colour green, or something fundamental about the colour yellow, which makes us react positively and negatively respectively? Maybe it is just that the satisfaction we get from admiring the serried ranks of neatly clipped blades helps us forget our ills, as postulated above. But that's not the only answer according to Cheryl Mainesayle, director of the British Lawn Appreciation Society.
"Lawns have a place in our hearts" she says. "they're emotive and they call out to us, reminding us of our early years as toddlers. The luxuriant feel of warm summer grass is one of the most pervading memories of babyhood." |
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Some feel Mainsayle has taken it too far. "What the bloody hell does she think she's on about? blusters Sir Bulgernon Bloater, MP for Costly Vale South. Lord Bloater represents something of a molehill to the pro-lawn lobby, out of which they seem to be successfully making a rather substantial mountain.
"That Bloater man is terrible" recalls Mainsayle. "I met him at a cocktail party to raise money for my charity, Headphones for the Deaf. He was very rude, and kept aking what the bloody hell I was playing at, raising money for deaf people to buy headphones. How could I let him know that it was a front for the BLAS?" Others are even more adamant of Bloater's guilt: "Linch him! Run him over with a lawnmower! scream BLAS activists wielding placards adorned with the esteemed peer's noble profile.
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The BLAS want more government money spent on upkeep of grass in the UK. "We are nuts about it" confesses one BLAS member. "I even had my car's roof seeded with rye grass and the seats are also grass-covered"
There have been several acts of lawn terrorism over the last few years, including the militant mowing of several motorway embankments, which have bemused the British public. The BLAS claims that in carrying out these high-risk mowings it is "legitimately raising the issue of responsible lawn upkeep." This is something more than most of us would want to do in support of that favoured weed, the grass plant. But if you want to join the BLAS and help keep lawns alive in the age of Robocop, phone them on 0500 107869 and ask for Sandra. |