Why do we put up with that satanic machine, the leaf-blower?

Sorry to sound like a lame stand-up comedian, but, leaf-blowers – what’s that all about? We were just leaving Chiswick House grounds earlier today, having enjoyed lunch in the café, when a workman wielding one of these infernal devices passed us on our way to the exit. A minute later, from further down the path, came that familiar, maddening sound, like someone holding the throttle open on an old-fashioned 2-stroke motorbike (I know - I used to own one).

There were dozens of people enjoying the beauty and tranquillity of the lovely, peaceful park when this repulsive racket started – all but the profoundly deaf will have had their soul-enriching sorties ruined. 

And for what? It’s March, for God’s sake – the &x@*ing leaves are still on the %*@”ing trees!

Besides, ever heard of a rake?

Near-neighbours, who have a larger garden than anyone else in the immediate vicinity, employ a gardening company to come in once a week and give their relatively extensive estate a short back-and-sides: this means the rest of get to enjoy 90 minutes of high-pitched nerve-shredding noise – in stereo, no less, because, inevitably,  they use a hedge-trimmer as well. 

This monstrous and utterly unnecessary noise pollution will now continue once a week until late November.

“Neighbours- everybody needs good neighbours!” 

The portable leaf-blower (which my wife refers to, accurately, as “the devil’s machine”) was invented in America in the late 1950s by one Dom Quinto, as a crop-spraying device. According to Wikipedia (yes, I know!) its use as a domestic gardening implement spread due a drought in California, which meant water couldn’t be used for basic gardening tasks. By 1990, annual sales in the US had exceeded 800,000. Twenty California cities have now banned the device, and a further 80 US cities have restricted its use or noise level – or both.

I can’t find anything online about restrictions in the UK, which is odd, given that this used to a nice quiet country where neighbours showed consideration for each other (or am I imagining this?) 

Welcome to the New Barbarism.

If one were to remove a leaf-blower from the hands of the next peace-wrecker to wield one within earshot and then proceeded to insert it firmly up their jacksie, would any jury in the country actually bring in a “guilty” verdict? I expect the judge’s Stockbroker Belt mansion might ring to the din of these vile, pointless machines (while he’s not there, of course) – but I bet no one on the jury would own a garden big enough to warrant one. 

I wonder if the concept of using the machine as an Internal Organ-Blower is patentable.

Worth investigating.