Leave it to the experts

Three of them and an old truck, the versatile and unbranded nature of which betrays the fact that they are not actually specialists in the refurbishment of greenish outdoor areas but multi-talented manual workers capable of almost anything.

They are as adept at stripping foliage as they are at taking away the old mattress and rotten, curling, inexplicable shelving-unitswith- cupboards that have been loitering around the back since you moved in.

These guys have all the gear: machete, hands, arms, the lot.

They also have a hierarchy. The leader is garishly attired in a bright orange T-shirt that shows off his impressive beer belly, while the matching baseball cap, worn at a jaunty angle, signifies not only that he’s a bit of a lad but that he is going bald.

Never trust a man in a hat.

Even if it makes him look good in a 1950s way, it’s there for a reason, and that reason is not to stay warm. Not around these parts.

Among the younger contingent it’s just something they do but on an older man, it means he is showing signs of decay and has chosen to disguise it, like putting woodchip wallpaper over a crumbling plaster job.

So, the hierarchy: Orange Fat Guy is in charge. His henchmen are a pale blue version of himself: OFG Junior, bulging shirt and cap included, and an older, retirement-age man who is also hiding his lack of hair but whose shirt cannot disguise hunched shoulders, one of Father Time’s hallmarks among those whose calcium supply has not kept pace with demand.

The hunched look may also be indicative of a general failing of physical strength but you can tell that if he were as robust in body as he clearly is in mind, he would be the leader of this crew.

He’s got the family brain, making helpful suggestions and pointing things out but OFG has assumed a rank above his station because he is the chief machete-wielder, the tough guy in a world where tough guys rule.

Orange Fat Guy has a plan of action, based not on any knowledge of gardening but on simple logistics. While in a multiple choice test he might correctly answer that the garden is b) outside the house; put him out there and if he could reach something with his machete, he would sever it.

The old man and OFG Junior follow him around, dutifully picking up the branches and bushes he has liberated from their parent plants and dragging them to the truck.

Interestingly, the crew’s modus operandi is highly unusual, perhaps revolutionary. Whereas amateurs such as you and I might have left the raking of leaves till the end, this lot were here at five in the morning to do that before they unleashed the debris from the trees. Well, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round, so who is to say we are not witnessing pioneers at work, doing things that we only think stupid because we’re lagging behind intellectually? The trees these men have to deal with include a mango, which dropped its last several weeks ago and has no right to be looking so green and happy.

Then there’s a coconut palm, naked up to about 30 feet and with flaking red paint around the base. It doesn’t look very productive but still occasionally drops sick-looking fruit over the fence to sit and fester on our lawn.

I’ve been hoping OFG would scale the tree like one of those lithe young men you see in documentaries who are up there like squirrels before you can say “telecoms engineer.” But OFG’s coconut- harvesting days are behind him and he knows it.

Also in the vicinity is something I think is called a cocoplum tree, which produces purplish fruit not unlike plums to look at but whose white flesh contains all the succulence and flavour of Polyfilla.

OFG doesn’t like this one, because its branches are thin and tangled and it takes more than a hefty swipe to disengage an offending part from the rest. He makes a couple of wild incisions and leaves it to Junior to drag the thing apart like Velcro.

What this intrepid crew really lacks is a brush cutter, known in some areas as a strimmer, which cuts grass not with blades but endlessly rotating lengths of nylon string. This is the tool that confers gardener status on anyone capable of lifting and, if petrol- operated, starting it.

Next door, though, there isn’t much grass and the owner seems to be leaving it to the sun and a general lack of care to keep it down.

Ignore it and hope it will go away: the popular answer to many of life’s challenges.