EMISSIONS:With winter here it's time, indeed, to mend the fences, or in this case, fill in the mud fields, writes Kilian Doyle
MY CLASSIC beemer and I had a parting of the ways recently. Let me elaborate. My driveway - wide enough for a single car, namely my wife's - is bordered by grass. Or, more precisely, small fields of mud. Therein do I park my car, the Duchess.
Understandably, as our little corner of the country is prone to deluges, she got stuck. Fast.
Unable to reverse out, I tried to push her myself.
Bad move. My shoes, which had as much grip on the mud as Michael Jackson has on reality, went out from under me. As I fell, my wrists slapped off the edge of the bonnet. Which hurt. A lot. Thankfully, the pain from my nose hitting the bumper was so severe that it took my mind off my wrists.
I ended up face down, floundering ignominiously in the mud.
And the Duchess? She'd moved not an inch. I had to wait for Mrs Emissions to get home to help tow her out.
"Enough is enough," said I, filthy as a dysentery-ridden cow's backside. "The grass must go."
But what to put in its place? I was mindful of the warning by Minister for Wellies John Gormley about paving over one's driveway. Leads to flash-flooding, apparently. So concerned is he, indeed, that he's introduced a proposal to require homeowners to get planning permission if they want to do it.
But is the problem as serious as he says? And if he's so worried, why isn't he out with a shovel digging up the carpark where the Leinster House lawn used to be?
I resorted to the internet to test his claims. Google's first offering among unequals was a blog by a chap called Paddy Counterpoint that addressed this very issue.
Paddy - not his real name, I suspect - endeavours to demonstrate that John "Cars Are Evil And Must Be Stopped" Gormley may be somewhat overstating the dangers for reasons I can't possibly imagine.
Paddy employs some deft assumptive arithmetic to show that the total proportion of land area in Ireland made up by paved driveways is a whopping 0.04 per cent. Not being a mathematician or geographer, I can't confirm our pal's calculations. But they'll do.
If you're that way inclined, feel free to check Paddy's figures. Word of warning, however: his blog is a tad uncouth. Readers of a delicate disposition may be best advised to just take my word for it.
While now unconvinced by Gormley's "paved driveway equals flooding argument", I remain a civic-minded chap. So I plumped for the gravel option, just in case.
In the garden centre, I was soon befuddled. Who knew the world of gravel was so diverse? "Would you like gold, bronze or white, sir?" said the hobbit attendant. "Marble, granite or limestone? Cobbles, pebbles, rocks, boulders or chippings? Rounded or pointed?"
"Just give me some stones, would you?" said I, confused as a Fás accountant. "How much? What? A tenner a bag? Are you leading me up the garden path?"
'Tis far from paying for bits of rocks this country was reared. I briefly considered resurrecting my old Snow White costume and breaking into a quarry at the head of a troupe of eager pickaxe-wielding dwarves. But how to explain myself if I got caught? It wouldn't look good.
I had no choice. I coughed up €600 for 1,500 kilos of golden pointed gravel, which I'd been assured was the choice of the true aficionado.
Eighteen hours of labour and a near-hernia later, the swamp was gone, replaced by a little patch of tidy loveliness.
I imagine you must be on the edge of your seats wondering how the Duchess fared in her new parking spot.
I'm delighted to report things are much improved.
I still have to tow her out, but one doesn't get half as messy towing a car out of gravel as mud. Result.