A Slippery Slope

A few days ago I went down the front path to collect the mail and slipped on the bricks. It was not raining, but the bricks, I realised, had become black with mold and lichen and dirt and possibly plague. I managed to stay upright, but not without a fair amount of windmilling my arms and skittering about like Bambi on Ice. Or Jessie on Slime, the remake no one wants to see.

My normal response to this would be to palm it off to Drew, who is Outside Guy at our house on account of how I hate the sun and the biting insects and he likes plants. But on Sunday I thought it was time I stepped (skidded like Kramer entering Jerry’s apartment) up, and I was also putting off doing the yoga video my acupuncturist told me to do. I was feeling extremely overburdened with things I had to do, mostly because leading a healthy lifestyle in order to not have a sore foot seems to be a fulltime job, what with all the yoga and foam rolling and stretches and roasting vegetables and drinking water etc.

It was not without a hint of martyrdom that after Drew had been round to see if the power washer we share custody of with my parents was anywhere to be found (it wasn’t) and then he’d been to Bunnings to buy a new one, that I bravely plugged it into both electricity and a hose (thought this seems against all we have been taught) and switched it on.

And blow me down if using a power washer (we call it a gurney in my family. Is that normal or is that just an us thing?) isn’t the most zen then you can do. I was out there for ages. Three hours, that’s how long I spent on path that’s maybe twelve metres long and about sixty centimetres wide. It’s made of bricks: six across, two horizontal beside two vertical beside two more horizontal. In between the bricks I guess there is supposed to be sand or dirt or something, in order to keep them in place. There were mainly weeds doing that job when I started up the gurney, and there was absolutely nothing holding them in place by the time I had finished. All the dirt, sand, weeds and ants that lived between the bricks were blasted away, alongside the lichen, moss, slime and plague. Some of it ran off in the water down the path and onto the road, though much of it went onto my feet and trouser legs, and the side of the house. Did I care? I did not.

I have not been happier in a long time than I was during those three hours. I just stared at the grotty bricks and methodically sprayed the filth off them. I tried out different techniques and angles, but honestly, unlike me in front of a camera, there are no bad angles with a gurney. You either get lots of crap off the surface or all the crap off the surface. It’s like toothbrushing, but one billion times more satisfying.

While I worked, I recalled seeing an ad recently on a local Facebook page for a kid who was offering to power wash people’s driveways for $4 a square metre. I idly did some maths about what Australian authors earn, on average, in comparison to that kid. I wondered if I would be leaving a greater legacy to the world if I gave up writing for professional power washing.

Then my neck got sore and my trigger finger started to ache, so I stopped and went inside. I haven’t had time since Sunday to get back out there, but I will as soon as I can, to clean the backyard and the driveway. And maybe the footpath, the neighbours’ driveways, and perhaps, one day, the whole world.