How best to cut ridiculously long grass?

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We aren't good gardeners and our lawn has got completely out of hand in the last few weeks in particular. The grass is now waist high on me (I'm not very tall, but even so..) in places. We've got an electric rotary lawnmower but I'm not sure it's best for the job now. Any advice about how best to get it down to a manageable level? Don't mind hiring equipment from a hire shop.

Get a goat.

Strimmer. Our allotment was like that when we took it over last year so we hired a petrol strimmer for the weekend, an electric one would be fine at home.

Dh has strimmed ours in the past - it hasn't been as high as yours, but certainly too high to mow.

It's a petrol strimmer, makes a hell of a racket and the neighbours must hate us! Does the job, though; takes it down low enough to mow.

Either that or scythe it!

I would use a scythe (a bit dangerous, though if you haven't done it before) or a trimmer to shorten it and then use a normal lan mower.
then feed and water well.
be prepared for the lan looking awful for a couple of weeks.

Hire a petrol strimmer to get it to a reasonable length for your normal mower

Ooh, thanks! That was fast. I'd quite like a goat though not sure how one would cohabit with our cats (who love stalking birds through the long grass - another reason why it needs to be cut. I had wondered about a scythe, but not sure I would trust myself with one. Will check out strimmers. Cheers!

Just out of curiosity, is a strimmer the same as a whipper snipper? Has a fast spinning bit of plastic to trim grass etc?

yy to strimmer/trimmer - and rake up before you go over it with the lawn mower (otherwise the long bits will wrap round the blades - just like it you did straight with the mower - and keep causing it cut out etc....)
And watch out for frogs/hedgehogs etc
And it will look awful ...maybe want to throw grass seed down for bald patches...
Or you could do what I did in my innocence about 20+ yrs ago ...and cut it with an old bread knife ...didn't know strimmers existed - or where to buy a scythe...
yes it did take quite a while ...and now I'm sure the neighbours thought I was nuts...