knotweed

and the north

The knotweed guys are always from the north. Not Liverpool or Manchester, the two accents I can reliably place as a foreigner but the murky out of focus part of England I can’t summon up without thinking of hobbits and ancient oaks, the kind eat little girls who dawdle in the woods. The Vague Middle North, where the people are “just lovely,” and the landscape is “absolutely stunning in spite of the rain” but where no one from London ever seems to go except maybe to visit their half demented nan in a care home, because flights to Mallorca are £40 on Ryan Air so really, who would?

‘My folks are back in Clitheroe,’ they’ll say, these knotweed guys from the north, ‘but I recently moved over near Scunthorpe’ or ‘no far from Bradford up near Ilkey way,’ or Bridlington or Hull, plus they’ve got a sweet little caravan they’re fixing up in a pretty quiet park near Snowdon or Grassington on the Yorkshire Dales, ever been? I have not. Apparently it’s stunning. Just stunning, if you don’t mind the rain. Better than Cornwall and Highlands rolled together. And the people are just lovely. This is always how it goes when I ask them where they’re from, because obviously you have to ask, that’s the rule. Just like it’s the rule that you offer them a cup of tea which they in turn, are duty bound to refuse.

The knotweed guys come twice a year, it’s part of a contract, a box-ticking exercise because our house is hard up against four track railway which means the tendrils sneak in from under the back fence. Knotweed isn’t native to Britain, you see. It’s an invasive species. Rumour is some anarchist crypto-hacker brought it back from trip to Tokyo as a practical joke on the British haute bourgeoisie. Japanese knotweed it’s called. It’s insidious, just google it. The search results are chilling, like Little Shop of Horrors without the songs. Left untreated, knotweed gets in everywhere — foundations, plumbing, wiring the lot. It creeps along the eves and down chimneys and insinuates itself under the floorboards and up through the walls into the bricks and foundations before it begins the the slow sure work of slowly of ripping your sturdy old Victorian terrace apart.

You know it’s a myth right? the knotweed guy says. I’ll be honest.

This one’s called Chris, he’s thirty-two, from just outside Leicester. My height, zaftig, ginger, easy smile, face like a bowl of honied porridge. He’s got a dog and a girlfriend he calls a life partner but they don’t live together, no plans to either. It’s not economical but they just like their own space. Plus no kids, so it suits. They both know how to cook.

Yeah I heard it was a bit of a scam, I say. I mean, have you ever heard of house falling down because of a Japanese weed? It not like termites.

No, but luckily we don’t have them here.

But hey, we’ve got knotweed so…

Chris laughs. Yeah. It’s one or atuther I spose.

I tell him we paid for the four year treatment package because if we put the house on the market the Finn from Winkworth said we’ll need the certificate. He assured us he’d seen plenty of deals fall through.

Estate agents, Chris says. Evil fuckers, aren't they?

I think it’s more the insurers.

Oh well they’re good people. Won’t hear a word against them.

We laugh.

Then I tell him I’m afraid there really isn’t anything for him to spray because I just did a big clean up weekend and I must’ve pulled it all up, assuming there was any knotweed to begin with.

We’re standing in my garden in Kensal, a “London city garden” the evil estate agents call it, which means it’s the size of a walled off postage stamp with half-rotted ivy-covered trellis, a few hanging plants, jasmine vines and a weedy eucalyptus tree that needs to come down because the concrete wall that separates us from the Brazilians is starting to crack. I’m aware that I need to get back to my writing shed, which is why I’m standing in the near the door, fiddling with the handle, looking at Chris, who is wearing a yellow spray tank strapped to his back with a hand held nozzle attached by a hose. He seems a bit forlorn but in a kind funny way, like George Murray in Ghostbusters. He stares at the place where the knotweed should be, and considers what to do. Eventually his eyes drift over to a shrub.

How old’s your Celia there?

About seven years. Pretty when it blooms —

All those little tiny blue flowers, like faery parasols I always say. I’ve got one at home.

My problem is I don’t really know how to prune.

Chris from Leicester considers the knobbly Celia.

Honestly? he says, It’s not the worst job in the world. I’ve seen worse.

I laugh. Well, I should hire a gardener but for some reason I can’t.

Why not?

It’s like a mental block. I actually think it might some kind of ingrained Scottish thing, like an ancestral feudal holdover, you know? Received trauma from the potato blight days. It’s weird I have zero problem with cleaners or nannies or restaurants or any of that stuff, but I just can’t pay someone else to tidy my patch of dirt.