LOVE lettering on a wrist

You will say I have gone soft in my old age, and you will be right, but I want you to know what Mr Ashdown asked me to do on Tuesday. He wanted four letters cut into the far side of the square, where the grass runs down to the boundary rope, so the bride could see them from the pavilion steps. I told him the turf would not thank me. He said a groundsman's job was to make a place look loved, and I could hardly argue with that when I had a sack of bulbs and a half-written proposal in my own coat.

So I went out before the sprinklers at five with a turf iron and a string line. The L came first, a sharp corner with the foot kicked out the way Father used to draw his sevens. Then the O, which I made a plain circle because it was the only letter that did not need arguing with. The V gave me trouble until I stopped trying to make it pretty. The E I did last, three bars and a spine, and I left a good hand's width between each letter so the grass could come in and soften the edges.

By eight the sun was up over the scoreboard and the dew had made the cuts shine like pencil on wet paper. Nobody at the wedding looked at the lawn. They looked at each other. But Ada, the bride, walked straight to the rope at the end of the day, knelt down and pressed her palm flat over the O, and said the grass was warm.

Love, Albert