GRATUITOUS PRODUCT PLACEMENT MOMENT

I'm not one for waxing rhapsodical about particular brands or products. No sirree, no capitalist-logo-wearing-corporate-free-advertising-whore me.

However: we laid our new lawn in the backyard a few months ago (I saw we. What I mean, of course, is since we dug out the old lawn and then paid a friend of ours to do the laying of the new lawn for us. However, I digress), which has necessitated the purchase of a lawn mower.

I hate mowing. It is a necessary evil, I understand that, but pushing a heavy, wheeled bastard of a petrol-powered food processor through a cloud of midges, flying twigs and grass clippings for a couple of hours is not my cup of meat, thank you very much. And lawnmowers are one of the world's most annoying inventions: they get bogged, they cut out, the wheels gouge trenches into your lawn, they're obscenely heavy. There's a reason so many of us pay a commercial contractor to do the mowing for us. Anyone that stupid deserves a few bucks to help with therapy.

So let me just say this, in my non-commercial whore way. My new Flymo is THE dog's bollocks.

$199 for a machine so light I can pick the box up with one hand. It operates by creating its own hovercar-like cushion of air, which meant I was quite literally mowing the lawn one handed, wafting it about in front of me like a vaccuum cleaner. It slides up inclines and bumps that would have a traditional style lawnmower bogged and boggled. It adjusts height by moving the blade up and down, not the entire chassis (anyone who's tried to adjust height on a petrol powered Victa with a full tank will understand the significance of this). It's quiet. It's easy.

I just mowed a 20x15 metre lawn in 15 minutes, with no frustration, no swearing, and not an ounce of pain to my back. Zoom.

The dog's bollocks.