An 11-year-old gardening fanatic has started his own business, motivated by a determination not to go down the "wrong path".
Christopher-Jay (CJ) Jameson, from Wirral, has been helping his mum out in the garden for years but has recently decided to turn his hand to mowing neighbours' grass in a bid to "keep active." CJ took to social media to spread the word about his new i nitiative and has since been flooded with requests from people all over the borough who are keen to sample his handiwork.
Mum, Sally-Anne Jameson, 29, told the ECHO: “He always does my grass and I give him pocket money. On Sunday, he was just bored and so he said he was going to set up a Facebook page to try and see if any other people in the area were interested in him cutting their grass.
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“Literally by Monday morning he’d had hundreds of shares and he already had people booked in. He did five gardens last night after school and is getting messages from people all over Wirral asking him to come and do their gardens.”
Sally-Anne is particularly proud of CJ's desire to harness his energy for good at an age when children start to decide "who they want to be". The family are based on the Woodchurch Estate, in Birkenhead, which, earlier this year was caught up in what the ECHO dubbed a "week of horror".
But Sally-Anne has no concerns about her son being led astray. She said: "He always wants to be doing something and he loves helping people out. He’s even said that he’ll do dog walking or anything just to keep himself active.
“He’s obviously at that age where you start deciding what you want to do and who you want to be. Some of his mates have started hanging around shops and stuff, and he knows he doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t want to go down the wrong path, he wants to keep busy.
“I’m really proud of him. Everybody has been saying how polite he is and giving him extra tips. He just loves being out there chatting to people and doing stuff for people. It’s not even about the money.”
CJ is offering to mow people's grass for a fee of just £5, and his endeavours have been well-received by the community. Sally-Anne said: "O riginally he was only planning on doing round here, but now even Pensby Kebab House has told him that, any day he’s working, he can go in and they’ll give him a free pizza because he’s so young and so eager.”
"It’s my 30th next week so he said the first thing he’s going to do with his money is buy me a proper present. He’s putting some money towards his year six leaver’s party and to go paintballing with his football team.
"He’s doing it after school and he’s got loads of requests for the weekend too, so I’m going to have to take him to places off the estate.”
You can keep up to date with CJ's progress via his Facebook page.
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