Let me explain.
Mrs P has what is politely referred to as a Cottage Garden. From what I am told this means it is basically untrained, allowed to ramble without restriction.
If you ask me it should be renamed a "Blokes Garden", which basically means it's a jumble of all sorts of stuff and can ramble wherever it wants and whenever because us blokes will be too busy at golf to tend it.
Anyway, for now, Cottage Garden it is and ours is a veritable jumble of very thick, native greenery interspersed with some ground level ferns.
Now in the grand scheme of things these ferns turn out to be extremely important to my beloved and she requires me to take steps to protect them when we are away with a purpose built automatic watering system.
On the face of it that's all well and good. But installing the required pipes and sprinklers is a bit of a mission. It has required me to spend long periods crawling through the dense undergrowth all the while under fear of an elbow or knee crushing some treasured plant life.
Recently I had spent an hour or so in the thick of it (so to speak) and emerged to a welcome cuppa just as the new neighbour's child appeared to visit George The Dog.
This young chap is a pleasant, rather inquisitive soul. English is not his first language but he's giving it a good go.
Anyway, he turns up the other day and we go through that normal thing you do when introducing kids and animals to each other. I'm sure, if you have a dog, you know what I mean.
After five minutes of strokes George decides he needs to go off somewhere on his own to lick his unmentionables.
In his haste he bowls the young fellow who ends up in half in a pile of recently turned over garden compost and half in a pile of lawn clippings.
I help him to his feet and suggest he go home to get cleaned up.
My cuppa complete I re-enter the tangled maze and crawl back to where I was putting in the last of what feels like 7346 sprinkler heads.
The task complete I am just about to crawl back out when the youthful voice of George's visitor, who had obviously decided against going and getting cleaned up, emerges from the undergrowth behind me.
"What do you do?".
Such was the stealth at which this young chap had followed me into this green tunnel I assure you I heard or felt nothing. It was like he had just spirited himself there.
So, upon hearing this voice, I was immediately transported in my mind to one of those "scary-as" movies of yesteryear where there's an old house and spooky voices of long departed children. You know the kind.
Naturally, in a state of utter surprise, I let out a yell.
Inside the house Mrs P heard the yell and assumed it was me telling her to turn the new system on for a test. So she did.
An aside here. Seriously, I ask you, if you heard such an obviously concerned yell you'd rush outside and see who was in peril wouldn't you? Not Mrs P. She heard a yell and rushed outside to turn on a tap. Groan.
Back in the jungle me and my mate were suddenly aware of a hissing sound coming towards us.
I knew what it was. He didn't. For a short while at least. And then, with a puzzled expression crawling across his face, he said: "I get wet".
At this stage there was nothing for us to do but beat a hasty retreat and get out as quick as we could.
Mrs P was there to meet us as we emerged from the undergrowth.
The "what on earth" look on her face was matched only by the look on the face of my new neighbour as I took the young fellow home to try and explain what had happened.
The pair of us sodden - and him looking like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and covered in grass clippings and compost - must have made an interesting sight.
I don't know what his mum said to him as she ushered him inside but the look she gave to me as she shut the door suggested he won't be allowed to come over and play again any time soon.
• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to kevin.page@nzme.co.nz .
