Study Finds Haddenham's Neatest Lawns Belong To People Who Have "Never Once Forgiven Anybody"

The Centre for Applied Behaviourism, a body with a letterhead, a laminated visitor badge and an address given only as "near Aylesbury, ish", has published findings it describes as "impossible to disprove, which is very much the point of them". The Centre claims a firm link between the tidiness of a domestic lawn and what it calls, in its executive summary, "a certain coldness behind the eyes at the garden centre".

Haddenham was chosen as one of four sample villages, a decision the Centre attributes to methodological rigour and the fact that its lead researcher's aunt lives here and does a nice lunch. Researchers spent eleven days on and around the village green, measuring grass with a ruler borrowed from a school, and rating each verge on a nine-point scale running from "Wild, Unbothered, Probably Fine" to "Immaculate, Concerning, Would Not Lend Them A Key".

"A hedge cut to a true right angle is not gardening," said Dr Ambrose Kettlewell, the Centre's Director of Lateral Growth, who holds a qualification he describes as "functionally equivalent to a doctorate, if you squint at the certificate". "It is a message. It says: I have the patience to do this, and I will still be doing it long after you have gone."

The Centre's fieldwork on Haddenham is said to have produced its most striking data set since the team's earlier work on people who reverse into parking spaces. One invented but widely quoted finding holds that a lawn edged with a half-moon tool is 4.1 times more likely to belong to somebody who has memorised the bin collection calendar for spite. Asked how that figure was arrived at, Dr Kettlewell said it had been "derived", and then asked whether anyone else wanted a biscuit.

Not everyone in the village accepts the science. Trevor Ansty a local resident said the report had caused "real distress among the neatly mown community". "I strim on a Sunday because I enjoy it," he said, "and because I want the man at number eleven to know I am still here and still capable." Pressed on the second half of that sentence, Mr Ansty said he stood by it and would be putting it on a laminated sign.

The Centre has since escalated. In a follow-up note issued on Tuesday, it announced that shaggy lawns are also a warning sign, described in the literature as "passive aggression with clover in it", meaning every lawn in Buckinghamshire now falls somewhere on the spectrum. Dr Kettlewell confirmed that a lawn of perfectly moderate length, mown irregularly and without conviction, is "the only safe lawn", and that his own is exactly that, which he called "a coincidence I am happy to have noticed".

The parish response has been measured. A subcommittee has been convened to consider whether the village green itself should be assessed, and if so, by whom, and whether the ruler should be returned to the school first. Its findings are expected in the spring, at which point the grass will have grown and the whole thing will need doing again.

Meanwhile, the village has found a use for all this civic energy. The Harvest Festival service at St Mary's takes place this Sunday, 4 October, with donations of tinned and dried goods welcome at the church from the morning onward, all of it going to the local food bank rather than back into anybody's cupboard. Bring something in date. The paper is aware of at least one tin of 2019 mixed pulses doing laps of this village like a fugitive, and this is its chance to be redeemed. Come for the harvest, leave the lawn alone for one afternoon, and let the Centre for Applied Turf Behaviourism worry about itself.