Surviving My Non-Car Chores: Mow-Toring Fantasies

Easter weekend. Four days away from the stresses and rigours of the office… which inevitably end up being used to do all the things I’ve been trying to put off so far this year. You know, interior decorating, bits of home maintenance and, yes, mowing the lawn.
Unlike my American friends, the plot on which The Towers Of Rust stand is somewhat less than prarie-sized.  I have to make do with an electric hover-mower and not the kind of V8-propelled, air conditioned lawn tractors that everybody uses in the ‘states. Still, that doesn’t stop me from turning the chore of hacking my way through grass (which has been abandoned since last autumn) into something approaching hoonworthy.
So the garden becomes a circuit. There’s a sweeping curve south, turn one leads into a tricky chicane then turn three tightens past the garden shed with a double apex before the straightaway which takes me past the swing hammock. After that it’s a drift past the patio doors and ready for the second lap, which takes the same course but on the inside of the track I’ve just carved. Then I continue in an anticlockwise spiral until there’s no more mowing left to do. I’m victorious, and can recline on a deckchair sipping from my magnum.
I need to grow up. Or do I?


Turning mundane duties into driving fantasies renders the most tedious of tasks, those usually mandated by your contract of cohabitation, enjoyable.

Similarly, I know I’m not alone in my supermarket exploits. Go out for the weekly shop and there’s a purpose-built racetrack just waiting for you. With a 360° caster at each corner, four-wheel-drifts are easy and my local Co-Op has organised the chilled meat, fruit and veg aisle in such a way as to have free-standing displays ready for a bit of Ken-Block style oversteer practice. Need bread and milk? It’s gymkhana time.
In those stores where the barrows only have steering at the front, achieving low supermarket lap-times requires a different discipline. Taking that corner from deli into housewares would be easy with a drift, but to get around it fast with fixed rear wheels might well need an inside rear to lift off the deck, 205 GTi style. Weight distribution is key; it pays to get the heavy items in first, the beer, the bottles of wine and the Pepsi before adding lighter goods like biscuits, coffee and toiletries. A low centre of gravity is essential to avoid a groceries-overboard scenario.
There’s an added advantage in all this tomfoolery; keep it up and your significant other may grow tired of your trolley-toting antics and force you to stay at home.
It’s a win win. In what totally non-car situations do you find yourselves making broom-broom noises?
(Images of highly tuned Mistley 0.24hr Race Flymo and Supermarket Sprint 500 copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2015)