AHPP

Same applies to Doug.

Is it that the cold neutralises a lot of smells and they're going wild on the ones being pumped out by active heat sources? ie Is it that they can smell themselves and you?

Some exist. Pretty sure I've seen pictures on here. Northamptonshire maybe?

I'm not a lawyer.

My panels are flat to a wall, which I like to think gives me every advantage in low winter sun. Probably not much difference but it makes me feel good. They obviously don't collect snow either.

I'd be interested to see a few photos if you have any.

Can you describe the workflow of cone splitting and digging stumps please. Do you do a pass along the line with the bucket first to try your luck getting some out whole or to expose more joints to stick the cone in? Or do you cone split everything from the top first and dig to finish?

That’s fairly easy then. There are about to be loads of those for sale anyway (the uptick has already started), many “due to circumstances.”

What do you want/need?

Just rewatched it. I must add that I'm a better cook than him. He reminds me of my mate, Andy, also an orienteer as it happens but also a vegetarian. Excellent man. Humane, witty, buoyant, measured, positive without being ghastly with it. A load of us were on the boat back from Lundy after a climbing trip. The sea was rough and a good half of the embarkees were sat looking green and unhappy, except the ones who were actively throwing up over the rail of course. Andy casually pulls out his recorder he'd been occasionally entertaining us with all week and toots out What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor? I had my sea legs and stomach so found it riotously funny.

It won't surprise you that I've seen that and have a lot in common with the bloke.

Flesh rich dining here continues. Steak with a caper and mustard sauce. Was a bit cowardly with the heat because I had butter and capers in the pan already. Needed a stronger sear on the outside for the same in the middle.

I have one that doesn't rev and clutch and wish I did. Massive plus.

My house backs onto an old coal pit. I got dead excited when the electricity board dug it up to replace the poles a few months ago. I was envisaging disrupted pockets of black gold that I could stroll up to and glean a bucket a day from. No such luck. Found about a tea cup full.

Smokeless is dreadful for ash. You want big lumps of old-fashioned, sulphurous, oily, black planet-death.

I've always thought I'd use the paste for fire starting. It's just a medium to hold the oil. I use dry sawdust and oil atm but drying sawdust is inconvenient for me.

I've often wondered whether it would be good for soaking up oil spills.

I let the ash build up until a woman visits. On the one occasion it built up to falling out of the doors and no woman arrived, I hoovered it out until the hoovers failed and then threw the rest over some brambles out the back. It really doesn't need doing every day. My burner can be left for months. New fires make old ash condense significantly.

I assume it's much like fox, which I haven't eaten either. Not knowingly anyway. I have had Chinese takeaways...

I once did a day near Watford for a bunch of moderately horrible gypsies. Loads of bits here and there around a forty acre woodland. The penultimate tree was, "Lovely oak tree. Just a fell. Might need a branch off first." It was apparently quite a away across the site so I assembled the bare minimum of climbing gear and saw, fuel, oil, wedges, axe etc. "Would you like some help carrying that?" "Yes, please." Orders were barked and five kids descended on my chattels. We started walking and after about ninety seconds we were all lost, separately, and my stuff was god knows where. My mood was short of ebullient. It was 15:00 in January, I'd been doing a load of fiddly bollocks with woolly specs all day and I was fed up with listening to pikey lardarses shout at each other. We found the tree. It was an utterly buggered oak, four foot DBH, on the boundary of a small domestic garden, crown (dead as) weighted towards said garden and the house at the end of it. The bottom was goosed so I spiked up forty feet, set my climbing rope as a pull rope and dropped back to five feet below the crown break, where the wood was OK. Still not good but OK. I wedged the crown over while some mercenary fat bastard shouted at the aforementioned kids to yank the rope. The woodland owner turned up on a quad bike and yanked it a bit harder and, eventually, over it went. The right way, thank christ. This was five or six years ago and I can't recall doing a sketchier fell since, nor one so wretched: double bar on spikes with no mainline, then hitting the sort of wedges that sink your heart when they sound back hard and don't move a micron. Stacking a staging of logs for the high feller is a neat trick btw. I'd have probably stood on the machine grab.

I have a draft set of terms for if I ever end up doing a significant amount of end client work. They include a finder's fee for animal shit (as well as loads of other useful things like instructions to not build new sheds underneath already quoted trees). People will be eating their pets soon anyway. Won't be a problem.

Got a link or a better picture?

As it happens, Jack, I’m largely with you. People can do what they want with their property, just as I can think they’re tasteless cretins. It’s a great system. There’s an argument for professionalism, refusing to carry out work to a crass specification for the sake of your own reputation (and soul), but at this stage of humanity I can’t blame you for sifting through the wreckage and looting the Rolexes off loose arms. What an absolute mess of a species.

What a diverse industry we’re in. My job is to not ruin gardens.