Notes from a Dirt Engineer - The Pit

Strange, still weather today. I feel no breath of wind on my skin as I struggle to remove horrid little bedding plants from their plugs; the roots have wrapped themselves around the holes in the base. I am rough, insensitive, squeezing them up and tearing them free. The soil is inhospitable, dry and grey/beige and all lying in stubborn particles like a crumble. I feel I could almost be in my bed, all adream; there is no weather in my dreams, just the still pocket of air between my duvet and I. The only discomfort which seems to occasionally enter my dreams is hunger. This can be cured (by those who have perfected the art of lucid dreaming) by the appearance, on request, of something from the food department of Ikea; rollmop, rye crackers, those odd little green cakes, the things my body is missing.

A roof of low cloud sits above me, it seems to amplify the exquisite bird song which fills my ears on thie June day and forms pleasurable little sparks in my brain. It occurs to me that I should perform some sort of test to check whether I am actually part of the waking world, but what, the pinch of flesh? I try to think of something to make myself laugh since I have occasionally woken up in fits of hysterical laughter (at one of my own jokes) but nothing is funny today, my mind is just sort of still and incapable only of mild irritation.   

Mr Morgan or rather, James appears with his dog and yet more trays of plug plants from the range B and Q like to call Verve. He tells me he loves plants but he buys all of them from this popular DIY store. I have nothing against the place, indeed I have been known to purchase the odd item from there too but to say you love plants and buy all of them at B and Q is a bit like saying you love food and only ever eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. He and his wife, a sickly sweet woman who looks like a toffe apple, have recently been on a diet and joined a tennis club. They've both lost a couple of stone. They could probably have lost the same amount of weight simply by engaging in the physical act of clearing their own garden but that isn't my business. Anyway his weight loss has given him an annoying confidence boost. It annoys me because I know it's due to the external weight loss rather than achieving some higher mental plane. It reveals him as vain, possibly sexually deviant since he has developed a twinkle in his eye and an infuriating change of posture; he sort of pushes his groin out and puffs his chest like a dirty, amorous pigeon.

He instructs me about where to put the rest of the plants and I pretend to be enthusiastic about them, 'Wow you've got multi-coloured packs of Antirrhinums!' He cracks a few jokes. I think he is flirting with me but almost as soon as I have this thought he switches to serious mode and his tone takes on that of dictator before veering into the flirting territory again. And so it goes on in a push-me pull-you fashion, stern, flirtatious, stern. I sense an inner-conflict between the fat sloth and the slimmed-down swank, the employer and the jovial cruiser. His fat, pink lips are wet with saliva, they haven't lost weight in fact they were thinner when he was eating more because of all the exercise they were getting. He looks hungry. I bend down to pat the dog, a golden retriever, it's adorably soft but has a sloppy, gooey quality to it just like the owner. In dictator mode he goes back into the house, striding like a teenage gorilla, trying out different walks for effect. As I step back to place the tray of plants on the ground I step into something soft with give in it and get that sinking feeling. If there's one thing guaranteed to put me into a bad mood for the day it's stepping in any kind of shit.

There are some jobs where you sign up for contact with excrement, for example, nurse, carer, kennel hand, toilet paper tester and there are others where it's just an unexpected pleasure. I am perennially astonished by the number of people who stockpile crap in their gardens but still care enough to pay for a gardener to attempt to make their outdoor space look nice (in the face of such adversity which they appear to be blind to).

There are two kinds of crap; the sort which comes from a dog, and I find the owners of chocolate labradors are the worst offenders here, they don't collect it until it covers at least half of their lawn area and the individual drops are large enough to rival that of an elephant. The other kind of crap is just general outdoor rubbish; plastic pots, spare bricks, broken toys, dead hanging baskets etc. Occasionally you get a client who combines these two types of crap and still have the audacity to act normal when you work on their property. Perhaps they have become 'crap blind'. 

Unfortunately James and his wife fall into this catagory. I despair at the amount of crap in their garden. It's like Steptoe's yard. Everywhere you turn there are piles of grow-bags with faded printing and all covered in snags, pots piled into towers, two dozen broken dog toys, a years worth of glass bottles at the back door, bits of wood, landmines of shit, broken tools and all the crap you can imagine. The annoying thing is it would take two trips to the dump and just a few hours to clean it all up and bag up the excrement; when the sun shines and the garden should be enjoyed the air just stinks of it. Why are they holding on to it? It's like a security blanket of shit. I believe it has worsened since they lost weight. A covering of fat replaced by a thickening of yard crap. It could be the same in their house, I haven't been in but from what I see through the windows it looks 'cluttered'.

And here I am in a state of ambiguity, planting twee little bedding from B and Q, am I awake or dreaming, is he flirting or dominating? Now I am also infected with crap. The aroma from the bottom of my shoe would surely wake me if this is indeed a dream state. The air around me seems to hang in suspended animation. It feels like something is about to happen, a storm, another flirtatious visit from James, the end of world, a coughing neighbour, I don't know it could be anything. I think of the shit that will stick to the pedals as I drive to my next client and feel insensed. My anger triggers a rumble of thunder some miles away.

I put in the rest of the plants - a job which always takes more time and energy than you expect, water them in and collect my tools. As I make my way across the lawn I scrape my feet in a sort of arc to get off as much of the shit as I can. Another car has appeared on the driveway and I can no longer turn the car so I am forced to reverse out, a task which I have no talent for whatsoever. I put the van in reverse, watching the mirrors carefully, but I go back and forth and just keep getting too close to the brick wall either side. Minutes pass and I grow hot and embarrassed, red and even more insensed. James comes out, walks slowly up to my vehicle with his hands in his pockets. His eyes are narrowed. I wind down the window. 'You're very close to that wall,' he says. I want to swear but I don't. Instead I glare at his groin which he is sticking forward toward me, it's level with my mouth in fact.

'I've got about two or three inches,' I say. He scratches his head and is silent.

There's a sense of urgency now. I want to leave now, I must get away. The smell of shit is filling the van. I put it in first go forward a few feet, then hit reverse and manage to get out onto the road using adrenaline rather than skill. I am free now and my relief causes me to speed for a few hundred meters before checking myself and slowing down. I have two weeks before I have to visit the shit pit again.