The pitch is cut in stripes, and the stripes are a decision, and the decision is mine, and the mower logs its hours. Every dawn the pitch has been cut before I get to it. Not in my stripes. In the old pattern, the diagonal one from the seventies that the club dropped, with the old width of cut, and the mower is in the shed, locked, with its hour meter up by the time it takes to cut a pitch, and the grass box full of wet clippings.
I am the head groundsman at a football club and the stripes on the pitch are the only thing about my job that supporters have an opinion on.
The stripes.
A mower with a roller lays the grass one way and then the other and the light catches it differently and that is a stripe. Straight, across, along, diagonal, a pattern is a choice, and I make it, and the club has used straight across for as long as anybody remembers because the television likes it.
Every dawn the pitch is cut diagonal.
The cut.
Corner to corner, the old way, the pattern the club used in the seventies, which I know from photographs, at a width of cut that is narrower than my mower, which means more passes, which means more time, and the mower's hour meter, in the morning, is up by the time a pitch takes at that width, and the mower is in the shed, and the shed is locked, and the key is in the office, and the grass box on the mower is full of wet clippings, and the pitch, when I walk it, has been cut, and cut well, better than I cut it, with the turns at the ends tight and no scalping on the crown.
I cut it again, in my stripes, straight across. The next dawn it is diagonal.
What has been checked.
The mower. Put in a different shed, across the car park, chained. It cut the pitch. The hour meter was up. The chain was on.
The pitch, at dawn, by me, in the dugout, with a flask. At first light the sound started. A mower, a cylinder mower, the old sound, the whirr and the roller, coming from the far corner, and I could see the pitch and there was nothing on it, and the stripe came. Diagonal, from the corner, laid down in front of me across the grass, the light changing on it as it came, at a mower's pace, with the sound, and at the far side the sound turned, tight, and came back, and the second stripe laid beside the first, and I sat with my flask and watched a pitch being cut by nobody for the hour and a half it takes at that width, and at the end the sound went to the shed, and stopped, and I went to the shed and the chain was on and the box was full.
Who.
The club's groundsman in the seventies was a man the older supporters still name. He had cut the pitch diagonal, and the diagonal had been his, and the club had gone to straight across when the television came, and he had not liked it, and he had retired the year after, and had, the old hands said, been seen at the ground at dawn for years after that, at the fence, looking at the stripes, and had died in the eighties.
He is cutting it his way. Every dawn. And it is, I am going to be honest, the better way. The diagonal drains better on this pitch, which has a fall on it, and the narrow cut is kinder to the grass, and I have known that for years and cut it straight because the television likes it.
What is done about it.
The hour meter is on the mower's service record and the mower goes for service twice as often as it should and the service man has asked what I am doing with it, and I have said, cutting the pitch twice a day, and he has said, why, and I have said, we disagree about the stripes.
What I do.
I look after the pitch.
I have stopped cutting it straight. The pitch is diagonal now. Mine, in the day, at his width, corner to corner, in the pattern from the photographs, and the television people have asked why, and I have said it drains better, which is true, and they have said the viewers will not like it, and the viewers have not noticed.
The dawn cut has stopped. The hour meter is where I leave it. The box is empty. The pitch, at dawn, is as I left it, diagonal, and he has nothing to correct.
Except that on match days, in the morning, there is one stripe on the pitch that is not mine. At the edge, along the touchline on the far side, where the old groundsman's hut was, one pass, one stripe, narrow, laid at dawn, in the light, and I leave it, and I have started to think of it as him signing the pitch on a day that matters, which is what a groundsman does, and I put my own signature at the other touchline, one narrow pass, and the pitch has two, and the television has not noticed that either.