AHPP

Another one for client psychology.

Progress moves quickly in chick town. They’re playfighting with each other, not as scared of me and the dog, scratching for food. Also eating full size grain kernels, which is handy. Glad I only bought the small bag of crumb. They still sleep with mother in the broody box in the pavilion but they’ve been mixing with the other chickens in the main run and free ranging close by. What’s the next step for getting them fully integrated? Move the broody box into the coop? Feels a bit too soon to be honest but thinking ahead. Several photos because they’re delightful.

I’ve got a Pard 008 without rangefinder. Wish it had one. Very hard to judge distance on a flat screen and with too much mag. For rats and rabbits on a .22 anyway. The distance and kill zone size makes it a headfucck with holding. Centrefire at foxing range, it’s fine. If you can see it, just aim on.

On rats, a band we've played with does an excellent song about a vigilante pest controller in Newcastle. Lyrics for anyone who can't understand fast geordie in a thrash punk mix (most people): Under the bridge and I'm scratching an itch with a rascal flea-bitten side hustle/Phosphorous glow and a Nokia phone to take photographs of my Jack Russell/Daughter in tow like Gandalf the Slow, I stalk the streets in my hi-vis jacket/Fresh off the dole, I control pest control, just show me a mole and I'll whack it. Nice to meet you, I'm the rat catcher/Twenty for the first rat, ten for every after. **************** your social services, just tell me where the ****************ing vermin is. Birds at my feet and I fancy a treat, it's a Donner with chilli and garlic/Can't get the staff or the camera to flash, I exterminate just like a Dalek/**************** Rentokil, I'm no fuss and no frills, and I'm out here making a packet/Fresh off the dole, I control pest control, just show me a mole and I'll whack it.

Rats are great sport. I recently had a fabulous few weeks of 1-8 a night with .22LR and night vision at the allotment. What have you got for air rifles?

Do you carry imperial, AF, Whitworth etc tools?

What sort of shooting are you into? What sort of stuff on the firearms app? Then we can all tell you you've picked the wrong thing.

It’s just occurred to me that we’re talking about roots. Do they fight back in the same way above ground pruning causes new shoots? We don’t do a lot of root pruning in this country.

No no no, you flip-flopper. Back a page you said it was goosed without equivocation. Then I was an idiot for not inspecting it in person. And now you appear to have come round to my way of thinking and are first in line for a group hug. Dig in. I'm the moron here. This is the internet.

Google map and streetview link (or at least screengrab) is always helpful btw. Keep location private if you want but the more info we have, the better advice we can give. Soil types, other trees down the street, even local knowledge etc. Someone here probably covers your area.

Someone snarked at me the other week because I offered a fairly firm answer from photos. Of course I wouldn't stake my life offering such advice but nobody's asking us to. If they needed advice they could pin liability to, they'd go and pay for it. But the people asking here don't. They just want a bit of a steer. If we said, "Can't say. Can't see enough. Liability. Consult a local tree surgeon." to every question, there wouldn't be any point in this section of forum existing. It's implied that advice offered here is the best we can give with what we can see. People asking for it aren't going to take it as gospel. Or at least they shouldn't. They don't know which ones of us are right/wrong, experienced/green, clever/thick. The British Stainless Steel Association has a very straightforward caveat on their e-mail signature, that I like and I think applies here. 'Advice and assistance provided without charge are given in good faith but without responsibility.'

It’s a sycamore. It’ll fight back. They haven’t ground very deep. They haven’t ground all the way round. Yes. It’s not the best thing to happen to a tree but you see ones that size growing horizontally out of cliffs and they hang on.

Also inconsequentially to this thread, I changed the name of it to client psychology thread. Partially to get a rise out of Jules but mainly because it’s the right word. You sell goods to customers and services to clients.

From memory, there’s other caselaw about valuable vs valueless trees so I bet the offering back thing isn’t as straightforward as people usually think. Offering conifer hedge clippings back is obviously stupid. I wrote a moot problem about it years ago. Will have a look next time I have the right laptop on.

Not sure if this should be dog thread or chicken thread but here I bally go.

He reads like the landlord. I don’t think it’s that bad either. Small/medium tree, well balanced. Legal side, ask a lawyer. Your tree probably shouldn’t have been on their land. Where it gets muddy (to me anyway because I’ve never properly looked into it) is when they abated the nuisance but did significant damage in the process. Not that there’s any other way. Have you got an insurer or landlord trade association you can ask?

Get that hate good and focused.

Imagine if these people had bicycles all over their properties to trip over as well. Wankers.

There you go.

Mine latches. I must have tried that. Will do consciously next time I need the grab on.

Now that’s a bit of context you left out in the other thread.

He paid last time I worked for him. Decent bloke and wife very reasonable for an equine type.

I broadly speaking agree but Stephen Blair and Gloria seemed to do OK out of it. I'm happy to leave that money on the table for the moment anyway though. It's worth more to me to not participate in the idiocy of expending energy running chip around the world when it can sit quite blamelessly in his garden. I'm actually making £50 more with option 1 btw. I subsidised £50 of the mewp in option 2 because I wanted an easier day.

I'm now trying to actually win more end client (i.e. not subcontract/freelance) work so am going away from my old pricing strategy (really high and IDGAF) to something a bit more normal. I've picked up a few tips from here over the years but I still don't know a lot about client handling and salesmanship. Let's put stuff in one thread. I'll start us off. I quoted a dying weeping ash the other day. 18" DBH, 30' tall maybe but fairly sideways and with a dead top. Quite short top too so a poor tie in point. Nice ish lawn underneath it. Property worth a couple of million in a pretty good part of a very good town. Looking at it with the bloke I was thinking, "He's never going to want dents in that lawn." and gave the spiel that I'd get up it, rizzle it down in little bits etc. Went away and found getting the right cherry picker for it was approaching more hassle than it's worth. Not insurmountable but annoying enough. So I gave him a quote for just flopping it as well. Quote(s) were this: Dying weeping ash on bank Option 1: Fell it on the lawn and fix dents (to a standard that would not impress at the Chelsea flower show but which won’t inconvenience your mower). Brash chipped into laurels. Logs cut and split and left in situ. £540 including VAT. Option 2: Climb/cherry picker it down so nothing on the lawn. It’ll all come down in its own footprint, ground protected with a mat and chip cushion etc. Brash chipped for that then shoveled under laurels. Logs cut and split and left in situ. £780 including VAT. Woke up this morning regretting giving him the choice. I suspect I should have just given him the (lack of) ground damage commensurate with the prestige of the property and that be the end of it. Then he accepted option 1 and I'm already thinking I want to climb it a bit to drop it in a smaller footprint and reduce the groundwork. Plus obvious regret of just being too cheap. So yeah, bollocksed that up. Right. Let's have it. Crap photo but might as well include it. Really does stick out going away from the camera.