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oldwoodcutter

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Everything posted by oldwoodcutter

  1. Comms are almost compulsory between a climber and traffic management guys on the roads like stop go boards, when one misunderstood hand signal or shout could be catastrophic.
  2. I can still get off my bed when the job calls for it. Would have been even earlier but I fell asleep again putting my socks on.
  3. There’s not a standing tree over 80 years old within 250 miles of cologne as we absolutely flattened everything. Plenty of concrete though.
  4. On the other side of the coin , a 14 year old was chatting to me in the yard this morning, I know they speak a different language to us old fogies , but he’d listened to the news this past week , and was genuinely really upset that his dad ( who is a desk bound civilian ) will probably have to go and fight in the war in a couple of years. I offered him a few well chosen words, but to use a modern term , he was getting stressed out about it all.
  5. Yes it must be a hard life not getting free goods whenever you want .
  6. There’s usually a gypsy stick to be seen laying on top of the chip in the box of most tree firms trucks. occasionally alongside a tarmac rake and extra long bolt croppers.
  7. The new mrs oldwoodcutter opened up to me the world of Strictly recently as I’d never seen it before. I kind of try to join in with her enthusiasm, comments and predictions, but off the record I don’t understand a word of it, nor the rules, and the dancers and so called judges and presenters are all unknown to me. However she gets her rocks off on it, so I cheerfully try to appear interested.
  8. I had a smallholder type customer once who promised bacon baps when we came to do his trees. We’d nearly finished the job when he comes out to say he’s getting them now, but it turned out he meant that he was getting into his old banger and driving the 8 miles or so to Downham, to buy the bacon and baps, which we didn’t know about til much later, we just saw him go. Well after about an hour I didn’t quite know what to do, for us to just load up and go to the next job would have been pretty bad form, but eventually we see him return and go into his farmhouse kitchen. Then the 4 of us get the call to actually go into his house and sit at his table. Then we see him sort of begin to fry bacon on the aga. The bacon was the texture of the sole of my old boot, and the baps were those rock hard crispy ones. I dipped bits of mine in the tea mug but still broke a filling. I noticed my climber ( whose lack of teeth are well known) had cleaned his 2 up in no time, and afterwards when I asked him how he managed to eat them so quickly he simply said he handed them under the table to the pack of dogs that were under there.
  9. Yes we’ve all had our fair share of undrinkable or inedible. But on the other side of the coin i think the best I ever had was years ago when working for a Lady long since dead, who sent her liveried butler out over the manicured lawns to take our drinks order, and he came back out carrying it on a large silver tray. I recently had to drive past that neck of the woods and everything’s much the same.
  10. For power to weight the 500i is absolutely brilliant. When I put in an appearance on site and the 500 has been put down for a few minutes I can’t resist picking it up and cutting anything big that’s laying about, just because it’s so good to use.
  11. It’s a well known fact that old women (by that I mean older than me) make the best tea. Last week I accepted the offer of a tea from a fellow before the job had started, 1 sip proved it was foul, when I tipped it out, the inside of the off white mug was a mahogany brown, it was all downhill after that with the whole work area over run with rats. Last month we were on an off grid type of shithole and the woman brought out teas made with what she proudly said was organic goat’s milk, large globules floating on the surface. I thought if I drink this I’ll never be able to keep solid food down again.
  12. Young and not so young, living happily side by side. Self sown Scot’s pine with beech on edge of FC shelter belt. Swaffham Forest
  13. That’s the usual heavy handed display of authority which would have even made John The Baptist lose his rag, but in my humble I would not go and raise hell at your local cop shop because as we all know, they can be very vindictive, and more than likely if you do, they will hone in on you in the future with enthusiasm. I sold an old van to a couple of rough diamonds who paid cash, and they didn’t inform dvla they’d got it. Also I think they gave me a bogus name n address as new keeper. A few weeks later it was abandoned near the sandringham estate. Needless to say Lily Law came calling as they’d used it for ill gotten gains and mine was the last genuine name on the V5. They cleared off eventually, but were mildly inconvenienced by the new mrs oldwoodcutter who told them that if they were going to be walking on her carpet they’d better take their size 12 boots off on the doorstep, which they did.
  14. Twin stemmed dead birch selected for felling, with big white fungi growing on both stems.
  15. Whilst in a FC beech shelter belt, came across this rather impressive burr. Compartment north of Dead Man’s Plantation, Cockley Cley.
  16. That youngsters felling has certainly brought the tree huggers out, sorry I mean the stump huggers, wonder who’s having the firewood?
  17. I’ve got to the stage where I’m not sitting in the cold of an evening. Switched on the North Seas finest yesterday and got it on now. I don’t want my epitaph to read “ made a few quid, wouldn’t spend it, sadly died of the cold”
  18. Josh has nailed it there. Mrs oldwoodcutter from my previous life, was a soft touch for neighbours and so called friends who , it seemed to me, would wait for us to leave the yard of a morning,then come calling to borrow and take everything from ladders,hedgers, tripods, old saws laying under benches, to sets of drain rods. Many had more money than me living in houses 3 times the value of mine. I used to have nightmares of them following her across the yard to open the sheds, and do them a good turn by offering anything they may spot. Despite my best efforts to deter her from those acts of charity, she believed she was doing the christian thing. I would only find out something had gone when I couldn’t find it, and then had to locate the borrower and go and retrieve it, often,same as you might say, shagged out. The new mrs oldwoodcutter simply opens the door and says you’ll have to come back later and speak to Tim about that,and of course the scroungers and freeloaders are never seen again.
  19. Not just building sites , but quarries, and factory yards have banned rigger boots due to previous, and potential claims for twisted ankles and long term sick notes from employees.
  20. Good evenin, im still waking up every morning . . . which is a bonus.
  21. You’ll be hard pressed to find any firm who will hire you a 661 Tom, even Ben Burgess don’t hire saws out now. If you do find one they will want £1500 into their account up front,repayable upon return of saw in same condition as hired. Just pay a local cutter to come and do it for you.
  22. Micks hit the nail on the head there, either personally supervise the work, or do it yourself with a labourer to help you, or have a turn on it. We all know as soon as you go underground anything can happen.

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