Bolt

Put the punchline first. How do you make a joke confusing?

Good result on getting them down. Working in someone else’s tangled mangled mess is never easy. Personally, if the now deceased cherrys are anything to go by, I’m not certain that anything else you do to the beeches will make much difference. Beech are not renowned for their ability to respond well to pollarding, or chucking out much regrowth. If there is plenty of growth low down they may make a hedge of it. If so, angling the final cuts will certainly do no harm to their chances though. If you’re lucky, they will turn out to be hornbeams! 😊

True story [bit of a departure for me]. My sisters cat caught and released a mouse in her kitchen a few years back, which promptly took refuse in a gap between the thick Devonshire cob wall and the waste pipe that passed through from the kitchen sink. My brothe-in-law, was well annoyed, as he didn’t wan the rodent burrowing into the house walls / chewing through the wiring or causing fires (thatched roof, etc). Having exhausted everything they could think of to get the terrified little sod out, he resorted to the .22 rimfire. Unbeknownst to him, the gap also carried the main electric cable feed, and he shot right through it, resulting in massive arc, and loss of all power. Bloody funny at the time (but maybe not for him).

Seth took his seat on the train, content that he would soon be putting the city behind him and returning to the sticks. An attractive but clearly business savvy young lady took the seat opposite, rummaged through her briefcase and promptly became engaged in a well thumbed book she’d extracted. As the train left the station Seth thought he’d have a little stab at making small-talk. “Interesting book?” He enquired, only to suffer instant regret as she lifted it to reveal the title: Sexual Statistics. Noticing him colouring up, she rather savagely responded, “Yes, it’s absolutely fascinating. For instance, I bet you didn’t know that the Native Americans have penises with the thickest girth,or that Serbians have penises that are much longer than the average?" Feeling slightly guilty that she had put the lad in an uncomfortable position, she relented and said “Sorry, that was rude of me… I’m Angela by the way”. “Oh, …it’s ok… its fine” stammered Seth “My name?… It’s Tonto Knezevic”.

I feel partially responsible. We both should probably have been more aware of the potential for this to happen.

I remember once my dad gave me money to pay for the electricity, but instead I bought 142 tickets to win a brand new car. When I got home, I explained to my dad what I had done and he beat the crap out of me. But the next day, when my dad woke up and opened the door, outside our house was a brand new car. Everyone cried. ….But no one cried more than me, because the car was from the electricity company and they’d arrived to cut off the power. Dad beat the crap out of me again.

Another hint to keep my trap shut.

Even if it doesn’t kill them, it will ampere their progress.

The salesperson tried selling me a sofa by claiming it could seat 5 people without any problems. Nice try. I don’t know 5 people without any problems.

Just mind you don’t get your nose trapped.

Weirdly, I think ladders may be covered by PUWER rather than LOLER, although they still require a schedule of inspection / daily pre-use checks etc.

It very much depends on the equipment, and the type of repair. Generally, the repair would need to be of a type approved by the manufacturer, and may need to be subjected to a thorough examination by a competent person before being returned to service. For ‘unconventional’ repairs, the competent person is possibly going to be the manufacturer.

Certainly not! I’d rather keep the mice.

Not sure I could spare any Mars…. Maybe use a rip-off Aldi one.

Maybe attach the current with a cable tie.

It is pretty sizeable. The turbines are generally only used during spikes of daily peak demand. They can go from generating nothing to full output in a matter of seconds. Electricity is transmitted via underground cables at 400kV. During the periods of low demand, all turbines can be ‘used in reverse’ to pump the water back to the top reservoir. It is, in effect, a giant battery, with an additional benefit of being a key part of the national grid’s ‘black start’ strategy.

Possibly the closest thing in the UK is this: Been there a few times, and the scale is amazing. Took the family once, on the visitor tour thing, which busses you deep right into the workings. Typically, they were singularly unimpressed!

Definitely try the Nutella or peanut butter, far less faffin’ about with tying stuff on!

@Ontario Firewood Resource Cheers for that Anthony, it was pretty slick (but then I’ve always been a sucker for a power plant tour)

Did you ever have a go with Nutella or peanut butter? You can smear it really firmly onto the trap trip, so that the mouse has to put some hard work in to get it off.

I generally rely on a pair of jet-black terriers to solve our vermin problems, but I could see that would only create additional problems with your current mousers!

Don’t knock Spam. As a precaution against shortages caused by bird flu, I’ve been considering getting in some practice at ‘carving the bird’ for Christmas.

During English class the teacher asks Little Johnny "have you ever heard of the word contagious before?" "Of course miss" Johnny replies "my dad actually said it when we were talking yesterday". "Can you repeat it for the class and tell us how he used it in a sentence?" ‘Yes, miss. We were watching the neighbours tree guy trying to reduce an apple tree using two ropes, and after a while my dad got bored of how slow progress was. “That’s enough”, he eventually says, “let’s do something else, at this rate it’s going to take the contagious .”’

Aaaahhhh, MySpace. I still get a disproportionate amount of pleasure by singing along loudly to Clean Bandit’s ‘Tick tock’ but substituting each tick tock in the chorus for a MySpace. Kids these days, so easily baffled.

Difficult to say really without knowing much about your employer’s situation, but as said above, It’s not a bad thing to demonstrate an appropriate level of responsibility for the damage. That being said, if it was a genuine accident that occurred whilst you were trying to get your days stuff done, these things are annoying, but to be expected. Unless your employer is in an absolutely dire financial situation, it seems a touch unreasonable to expect you to replace a very well used looking ladder with a shiny brand new one.