Aerate: Scouser hesitation in the garden

At the publishing company where I work we occasionally get ‘All-staffer’ e.mails. You know the kind of thing: ‘Could people no longer put coffee grounds down the sink as they are blocking the drains’. Normally they start with the phrase, ‘Sorry for the all-staffer, but…’ Well, this week we got an unexpected, ‘We have taken delivery of a Hollow Tine Aerator with no name on it, please could whoever ordered it, collect it from the basement.’

There was immediately great speculation in the building as to who had ordered the device and indeed, what was a hollow tine aerator. (Those au fait with the Grumpy Gardener's Handbook will recall it's defined in the Glossary) Was it used to dry clothes? Was it something you stuck in a cavity wall? Those in the know realised that it was one of those pronged things you stick into lawns to improve the drainage, and so I was suspected as the likely recipient.

As publishing companies tend to be populated by young creatives (and the odd old ‘I Claudius’ figure) doing it for love not money, the majority of people don’t have a lawn, let alone one big enough to warrant investment in a hollow tine aerator. But who did...?

I already possess a sturdy, green aerator (seen above embedded in my National Collection of lawn-loving mosses), but have no idea where it came from. I could swear I didn’t buy it myself. It’s probably my father-in-law’s. Since his and Hyacinth’s move from a converted barn to a flat we have been the recipient of odd tools poked into odd places around our property. He can’t bear to take them to the dump, sell them or give them away, so he redistributes them around the place when I'm not looking like a Spear-and-Jackson-wielding free-range hen.

“That was my father’s” he once said to me sharply as I broke one of the hickory-handled garden forks that had made its way unaided into our garden shed at Hinchley Wood. I had no idea what its back story was. It was just a fork in the shed and it wasn’t my fault it could no longer cope with the physical demands of London clay.

Anyway, I quietly forgot about the hollow tine aerator at work until one day while venturing into the office next door I saw one propped against a colleague's desk. It was a bit like the end of a game of Cludeo. It was him all along!

However the bigger point of interest was that the modern version of this trusty garden favourite now has springs attached underneath. What a great idea.

Once you heft your weight on top and drive it into the ground, the springs are compressed and will then help sproing it back up again. That’s the tedious bit about aerating the lawn, forever wiggling the thing around. I’ve got some springs left over from an old trampoline, now I wonder where my farther-in-law’s hidden his old welder…