oldwoodcutter

30 minutes ago, Will C said:

It’s about18 years since I went there last!

It’s nearly 30 years since I was , picking up my daughters.

10 minutes ago, Will C said:

We used to go roller skating at Walpole highway as yoofs, is the roller rink still there?

Certainly is,  I used to sit in my car to pick my daughters up and enjoy watching the fights in the car park at chucking out time, better than match of the day some Saturday nights 

Talking of milk floats,  I faced up to a large gang of pikies once who were trying to grab all my kit roadside over at Walpole Highway.

I overheard my son in law say to the staff afterwards , he’s got a lot of bottle to do that .

I piped up that i  used to be a milkman,  which lightened the mood somewhat.

Of the 3 self employed climbers I’v talked to within the last fortnight , all have said the same thing - dead as.

Pleased to see another bank holiday  Easter , that’s true. 

The possibility of driving to the coast has been suggested, but sitting in a queue for 2 hours,then spending a further hour finding a parking spot, buying fish n chips on the quay at £25 per portion, then queuing for 2 hours to get out is rather less than appealing.

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.

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.

There’s not a  standing tree over 80 years old within 250 miles of cologne as we absolutely flattened everything.

Plenty of concrete though.

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.

Yes it must be a hard life not getting free goods whenever you want .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 

Eh?

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.