Two mowers are better than one

I'd only cut our grass about three times so far this year and, on each occasion, it was dramatic.

Not because I'm a particularly flamboyant grass cutter. In fact, I would regard myself as a relatively average Flymo pusher.

No, it was because White Jnr wanted to help and strongly objected when I made clear that I didn't think he was quite ready to be placed in charge of a couple of big electric blades.

But thankfully, there was a fallback option which I took it by buying him a toy mower of his own. This afternoon was his first chance to have a go.

My fear was that he'd simply chuck his aside as soon as I started mine up but, to be fair, whilst he began the exercise effectively as my pillion passenger, he then went off to "cut" his own bit - only getting upset when the noise stopped after I turned my mower off.

The cutting is obviously the "fun" part of doing the lawn; less fun is the sweeping up afterwards. However, there's no time like the present for learning such a tough reality so, when I bought the toy mower, I also picked up a mini-brush which Jamie today took some convincing about before eventually agreeing to do his bit.

Give it a few weeks and I reckon we'll be winning awards for our grass, which I fear will be cut more times than the outfield at Lord's over the summer months.

Sadly, my trusty assistant won't be getting the reward of an ice cream every single time he does it - because his mother has just said so. Harsh.