When it comes to mowing your lawn, or cutting the grass, depending on where you’re from and your preferred terminology, are you an up-and-down sort of a person or a ‘concentric reduction’ sort of a person?

There is a certain therapeutic value to be gained from mowing one’s lawn. I think it’s the geometric control we can exercise over the grassy area, bringing a sometimes odd-shaped expanse of land under control, and then methodically working our way through the job in a precise fashion.

In many ways I find it like painting a wall or a ceiling in the house. You do your prep, removing anything that might get in the way of speeding along once you’re into your stride, then taking care of the border by ‘cutting in’, followed by the broad swathes and sweeps as you eat up the space.

I’m a concentric reduction kind of a person. I do my border, then knock out the rough edges, curves and shapes until I’m left with an unmowed rectangle. Then I move around the space in ever decreasing concentric borders towards the middle.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I can finish the job right by the compost bin with the last full basket of grass, for ease of emptying and returning the lawnmower to the shed, but it’s still a good feeling to do it the way I do it.

Hay fever be damned!