As soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong. Joe's usually amiable, weathered, 40-something features were tight, his mouth drawn into a thin line. We exchanged our customary greetings, but there was none of the chatting, the footy talk, the give-and-take that usually preceded getting down to work.
Unwittingly I made things worse by saying, 'You're on your own?' A few weeks earlier, when I'd arranged for Joe to come over to do some heavy gardening, he'd proudly mentioned that his son would be joining him in the business. But today the son, Matt, was, as Joe muttered it, 'discussing some issues with his mother'.
We both felt awkward — Joe because of some domestic upheaval, and I because the work he was going to do for me I would have been doing myself if ... well, if everything wasn't connected to everything else in a mysterious and unfathomable pattern that we know as 'life' ...
Four or five months ago, I took my ute to be serviced, and I mentioned that the rear driver's side tyre had a very slow leak. I helpfully suggested to Ray, the head mechanic, that the Second Law of Thermodynamics — entropy increases in a closed system — would ensure the fault would get worse rather than just go away.
Ray made a note to check the tyre, muttering something that sounded like 'bullshit' but may have been a more technical term familiar to mechanics.
In short, although the item was ticked on the service sheet, the tyre was overlooked. It continued to deflate, more quickly each time, and I would pump it up at the service station. 'Bring it back,' Ray said, but with Christmas approaching I didn't find the time. Finally, on 23 December I capitulated and set about changing the wheel.
This was a familiar task, one I have accomplished many times in my life. I knew how to do it, I had the right equipment and I was soon ready to bolt on the spare. But these are heavy wheels, much weightier than those of a normal car. As I squatted and lifted the wheel into position, someone stuck a red hot iron into my back.
I had crushed a disk. Stints in hospital, orthopaedic encounters and stern injunctions not to bend, lift, look sideways, sit, stand or run ensured a jolly Christmas and a rollicking New Year.
By the beginning of March, with the garden