Week 216: bees hate him

Monday 8 May 2023

• Sunday. Walked around a lake, paused to sit on a bench and look at the telephone, looked up to see two mallards engaged in a lewd act, good grief.

  Just around midnight, fireworks. Must be to celebrate my latest weeknotes, ha ha. Geese crying, cheers, nice one.

• Gave myself a sinus infection or something, possibly by cycling too far with an AirPod Pro in my ear and pollen in the air. I’m being a wimp but it’s not very pleasant, what a birthday present. Lost my Pedometer++ streak. But not really being able to go anywhere with my gushing nose has been a productivity boon.

• Voted. The local Green Party councillor was a Tory councillor a few years ago, which makes me wonder what’s the opposite of being kicked in the head by a horse?

• In my notes I’ve written “bees hate him!”. It takes a moment to remember this is about the lawncare influencer “SB Mowing”, who cuts people’s grass for free and makes videos about it, which is popular for obvious reasons – satisfying to watch, and the VIDEO titles are LIKE this.

  The YouTube comments are full of adoration, but I want to whip up some controversy: it’s not completely selfless, the videos are surely more lucrative than a traditional charging-customers-for-lawncare-services business model would be, and I’m sorry, anyone who uses a leafblower is a wrongun. And isn’t an “overgrown” lawn actually much better for the bee community? But I’ll grudgingly accept that it probably doesn’t matter, none of the boring American gardens ever resemble wildflower meadows, and it’s good that he uses his strimmer to improve the accessibility of footpaths.

  (He’s based in Wichita, Kansas, which raises the question of why he doesn’t call himself the Wichita Lawn Man, but to be fair a rival business had already taken that name.)