I enjoy pottering about in the garden, mowing lawns, weeding, building a deck or two, a plant bed here, a vegetable patch there.  I’m actually decent at it now, though it took time and some unsolicited advice to get there. My journey started when I bought my first house in a predominantly elderly neighbourhood. The residents were house proud and had plenty of time on their hands. They would yank a weed out of their driveway the moment it dared poke out a leaf. Meanwhile my lawn, occasionally mowed and mostly neglected started to look like the neighbourhood’s haunted house. The thought of hiring a gardner was quickly put to rest when I got some quotes. No way. How hard can it be to mow a lawn or trim a hedge? So, I bought a lawn mower, a hedge trimmer and some basic tools and started to do my own gardening, haphazardly at first, but soon I got the hang of it with some “help” along the way.

You see every time I was out in the garden, like clockwork, an old man would shuffle by and offer a tip. “You shouldn’t cut your grass that low” one said. “The trick is to trim often; every two weeks I would say”. “The birds will have that” said another, when I was generously spraying grass seeds on my lawn, “cover them up with some grass clippings”. And on and on. I didn’t ask, but I listened. And bit by bit, I became a half-decent gardener. So when I came across the Italian word “Umarell”, meaning an old man who stands by construction sites offering unsolicited advice, I laughed out loud. I had been umarelled. And not for the first time.

Growing up in an estate in West Africa, there was one guarded entrance in and out. By the gate stood a palm tree, and under that tree sat a group of old men, probably in their 40s or 50s, but to my teenage eyes, they were ancient. They drank, gossiped and watched everything. They were Neighbourhood watch before it became trendy. My mum, a single parent worked long hours and my sisters and I were often left to our own devices. This was only possible, because as the saying goes, it takes a village; and that village sat under a palm tree. They saw everything, they reported everything. So, when my mum came home and casually asked, “So, what have you been up to today?” You better tell the truth, because she already knew.