The gardener is back.
He comes round about once a year and sorts out our sprawling garden, whanging in some plants, and wrapping his worn and wiry fingers around the convolvulus that some waterhead built our house on.
You'll never really get rid of it, he says.
He works stupendously hard.
And fast.
He says you have to have goals, and he meets his goals every day.
Which means he arrives some time after 7, often waking us up with his clacking boots as he runs up the concrete drive outside our bedroom window.
Last Monday's sapping heat reduced the city to a doe-eyed half-paced shuffle of slackers.
But the gardener worked harder and faster than ever, occasionally staring defiantly into the very eye of the sun, the sun that was daring to challenge his goals.
He was glad he had brought a hat.
The gardener isn't only a gardener, though he loves gardens to bits.
He is one of those people who can just do anything that involves the human hand, hence he is revered at our house, where my wife and I have been effectively handless for some time.
He has had many jobs after growing up in the country where nobody locked the house and it was nothing to walk three hours to get home from school.
So much to do along the way, even if there was an angry father with a strap waiting at the other end.
Life was magical then, everyone was honest.
Not like now.
At school he was caned like everyone else, usually for petty indiscretions.
He did hit a teacher with a clod once but he was aiming at a boy who had thrown one at him first.
If you did something wrong and got caned, he says, often four strokes with the trousers down to ensure there was no padding, you didn't ever do that thing again.
But some kids got caned day after day, I point out, they seemed to like doing the same things again.
Ah, says the gardener, but they were idiots.
He watched where their lives went.
He said some of them went to jail.
The gardener has reached that stage in his life where he has encountered many many idiots.
His draconian cures for some miscreants in particular suggest he stands well to the right of Attila the Hun.
Boy racers?
Munch their cars and put them to hard labour with a pick and shovel, preferably in rock.
Abusers of children best hope the gardener isn't planning on making a late run for the judiciary.
Gurkha knives, he states flatly, they have the perfect blade.
I look up Google Images to check the blade.
Phwoaarr! The gardener owns several Gurkha knives.
I am tempted to suggest he brings one around to deal to the convolvulus once and for all.
The gardener walks everywhere.
He buys good quality boots that will see him out, not the cheap rubbish you find in chain discount stores these days.
He was never interested in cars when he was young.
He'll bus to Christchurch - it's only $45 - and he used to like the train.
Cars are like cellphones, impediments to letting us get back to the way we once were.
I know I am a whole lot lefter than Attila the Hun, but I find myself agreeing with much of what the gardener says as we have our morning and afternoon cups of tea.
No biscuits, thanks, he says.
I am old enough to remember the gardener's world as he grew up, and it brings a tear to my eye when he rolls the images past me with a why in his eyes.
But then it's back to work.
It is raining now.
The gardener quickens his step down the hall, he likes to work in the rain.
He can't understand why others don't as well.
Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
