Big J

Huge congratulations to her. It was a great final - probably the best game of women's tennis I've ever seen.

30 cube a year, heating a 102 square metre detached (and fairly exposed to wind) old farmhouse in Devon. Sod all insulation. It's just a 20kw stove in the middle of the house. We have to have a little electric radiator on in my younger daughter's room overnight when it's properly cold. I can't see wood catching on in any serious sense. Increasingly restrictive legislation (Woodsure Scheme etc), lack of national supply, extremely high firewood cost and idiot customers who won't season their own all restrict the market's potential to grow. Heat pumps are the way to go I think. The majority of houses in Sweden are on geothermal or air source heat pumps, despite the obviously massive availability of timber and it's much lower cost. That said, electricity being 2-4 pence a kilowatt hour certainly incentivises it. Insulation is the main issue here. Most houses are terribly insulated. Even new builds (where there is no excuse whatsoever for shoddy specification and workmanship) have the thermal efficiency of a paper bag. My brother's new build in Exeter is always markedly hotter in a heatwave in summer and chillier in winter than our crappy old farmhouse. Anyway, I've planted about 62 hectares of eucalyptus nitens down here, so I'm sure we'll find out how good a firewood that is in a few years

Narrow country roads you say......? 😆 It is very true. The spectrum of technical ability on the roads is staggering. If ever I meet someone on a single track road, I nearly always just reverse as it's quicker than me waiting finding out if the other person can actually go backwards at a reasonable speed.

This is not good. It's a legislative sticking plaster; an admission that there is a fundamental need to fast track the training of a hundred thousand people into HGV driving. But more worryingly, it's an erosion of a necessary skills benchmark that formed a part of continuous training for people wishing to progress their driving. Towing a trailer of 3500kg should not be taken lightly. It's a weight that will usually be substantially heavier than the tow vehicle and badly loaded or badly driven, can cause a serious accident. I did my trailer test over ten years ago. I'd already driven a fair bit with light (but often slightly overloaded) trailers, and I felt the benefit of a day of training and the test at the end. The trailer test is nothing more than an advanced driving test, but that's not a bad thing. I'd regard myself as a technically very competent driver, but I'm still cautious when towing. That's partly common sense and partly training. There are still a vast number of drivers leaving the profession every week. Conditions are crap, treatment by other road users is abhorrent and services inadequate. Fixing these fundamental problems isn't as simple as lowering the standards of training or upping wages. The general public doesn't have an appreciation that lorries are responsible for transporting just about everything. Re: 1997 and there not being serious issues with heavy towing then. There are almost 10 million more vehicles on the road now than in 1997. We are much more congested. On R4 this evening they had an interviewee saying that the 'just in time' system for supplying goods is now unworkable. The days of being able to go to a supermarket and expecting to find any given product are over. Saying that we should just train and employ British workers is a) wrong b) unworkable c) ignores labour surpluses and deficits and d) ignores reality. We are part of a global economy and there are literally hundreds of thousands of capable drivers prepared to work here and yet the government won't add HGV drivers to the key skills shortage list. Madness.

Ripe pickings in the Matt column at the moment:

I came across a new composer (to me) with a short piece tacked onto a recital that I was listening to on Youtube. Astor Piazolla - Argentinian and regarded as the foremost composer of Tango music. This piece (Libertango) is great fun, unmistakably South American and fiendishly difficult to play.

An absolute cracker of a heavy leaning ash (I think - I was so horrified by the felling I didn't pay any attention to the tree species) recently felled at Woodlands theme park in Devon. Spotted it whilst there with the girls. I think it's the worst hinge I've ever seen. The tree was a good 70cm in diameter.

Onto the spruce racks now. Steep ground and hairy trees but almost a third sawlog. Did 15t winched, processed and extracted by myself today (with the trees already felled ahead of me). It's productive, but there was a fair bit of brash handling with the forwarder as I had to build a shelf of brash to spit the logs into. The track isn't wide enough and there is a lane below it. Either way, we're only a touch less productive than the harvester operator (who was unable to reach the job in time) and more profitable. It's just a hard graft. I did 5 miles of trogging up and down the hill with the winch line today.

Thanks for all the feedback chaps. I'll have a think. It's just wire, as far as I can tell, but it's not at all old. Which means that some bright spark threaded it through an unthinned sitka plantation.

I've spent about 20 minutes going around in circles, having spoken to BT who directed me to Openreach (who no longer operate a phone service) and then sifting through the Openreach website to no avail......argh 😡 Anyway, we've got a BT line taking a shortcut through the sitka block we're presently working in. The landowner is happy to have the corner removed (it's about 40 odd trees, but they are at first thinning size, so it's not a large area) but we need to drop the line to do it. It'd take less than 2hrs. Can anyone give me a number or a direction towards someone I should speak to to arrange this (in Devon)? It'd be doing Openreach a favour as the line is being contorted by the trees. Thanks in advance.

Beautiful weather here at the moment. Just perfect really - not too hot through the day with blue skies and a slightly crisp morning. Long may it continue.

It's the same argument I use for keeping my older wife. Replacing her with a younger model might seem like an attractive option, but in the end it's much more resource intensive. Perhaps you'd get improved performance, but ultimately you pay for it. 😆 (ps, this post was approved by the editor/censor (ie, my wife) prior to upload - I am sure I have some trousers somewhere, but I sure as hell don't wear them)

I’m spreading the word about the benefits of eating dried grapes. It’s all about raisin awareness

You can blame Radio 4 for that one 😄 Dr Phil's bedside Manner, 18:30 today. Apparently, this was a joke told to a surgeon by an 11 year old he was about to operate on.

Why did Sally fall off the swing? Sally has no arms. Knock knock Who's there? Well it's not Sally

It's not a great photo to be honest. It's actually a rather nice tree, though I am biased towards eucs They don't need to open up the view as the garden is wide, so they have plenty of space to look at the fields. It's the only tree in the garden, and given that it's a fairly large garden, removing it would leave it lacking somewhat.

It's not nitens, so not super fast growing and it's been reduced in the past. What would you do instead?