I once met a South African guy who told me that when he migrated to Australia, walked out of the terminal and saw a white man raking leaves, he put down his luggage and watched awhile in amazement, knowing he had entered a new world. He’d never seen a white man do manual labor before.
Before I’ve settled into the text, my southern neighbour will have started his whipper-snipper He will leap about and scythe away at the kikuyu like Errol Flynn skewering pirates, his machine screaming until his backyard has a full Brazilian. When the whipper-snipper finally dies, he unholsters his leaf-blower and pulls the trigger on a boutique hurricane. Another hour of unmuffled internal combustion.
When he’s finished, western neighbour will start his pressure-washer – the grown man’s water pistol, a machine for gifted alarmists able to see the devil’s daguerreotype in a bloom of porch moss. All these machines run with a backing choir of as many as eight lawnmowers, near and far, snarling their suburban undersong. Every shrub sheriff must own an array of power tools to tame his triffids these days. There’s no thought of collectivism.