pgkevet

Knew that but figured the smaller shingle sized bits might be trimmable? Any others? I'm planning on putting some chestnut in 'cos it seems to be one that's missing from my woodland to be (purchase plodding through slowly)..but that'll be for future generations. Thinking about some walnut too if the ground is good enough..but that's just 'cos I like walnuts. I'll get to do a full species survey later.

I used to think of bitch bark as the thin silvery flakes - but then I can be dense at times:001_smile: It was when I found some of the Ray Meers youtube stuff on building birch bark canoes that I realised how tough and leathery the stuff can be. Cut up into manageable pieces and tacked down it should be good. I suppose an enthusiast could even stitch sheets into a canvas using the canoe method. My going back to being a country person after decades away means I'm going to have to start looking all these old crafts up again. Heck, I can't even remember which trees split straight! The last thing I did was make a chair out of Willow when i was fourteen : split and shaped and morticed out of a log split to staves rather cane style. It was a poor effort visually but supported my weight - that's 47 years ago!

I was reading something the other day about how good Birch bark is as waterproofing and historically used as shingles. Supposedly the bark dries and comes away fairly well and is rich in tars? I don't know any more but might speculate that partial drying/peeling then flattening with weights prior to trimming up??

..looks like it swallowed a tree-hugger :-)

Spoonerisms. You may not know their origin in the Oxford Don Dr Spooner who became famous for his inadvertent mixing up of words. The classic example always used to be '.take the next town drain' when he referred to the 'next down train'. Checking online there are many other classics attributed to Dr Spooner. I like the one where he is greeting a new lady undergraduate at a reception and meaning to say 'You will soon be as mad as a hatter, of course' it comes out as 'You will soon be had as a matter of course'. But I digress from my story. We go back here to around the mid 70's. I was working in a busy Practice west of London. The woman in charge of the local Cats Protection League wasn't my easiest client and on the day in question it was her own cat that we had in for surgery. Mrs. H would probably have been quite patient over a CPL cat but not when it was her own. And, as someone who we say almost every day with yet another sick rescue, she obviously thought she was entitled to special considerations. Back in the early 70's anaethesia was usually induced with barbiturates. And if any of the drug got inadvertently injected outside the vein or if the doses were marginally high for that patient or if they were given very slowly then it was possible to have very slow recoveries. Mrs H's cat was in for a minor job but cat's recovery was prolonged. Not prolonged in any scary way back then and we really didn't have concerns but Mrs H did. Mrs H was ringing up about every hour to find out how cat was doing. And Mrs H ringing up every hour was starting to get on my bits because it was interfering with all my other work. During the later part of the afternoon there was yet another call. Cat had been recovering slowly so while nurse had the telephone I nipped out to the kennels for another check. Cat was sitting up and fine. Assuming that my nurse had the phone on 'hold' I bellowed at her 'Tell Mrs C she can have her effing hat back anytime' It's a shame that the phone wasn't on hold and Mrs H was called Mrs Hunt...

Lancs has had a cold snap then?

I thought you guys just popped a few pine needles in the cup? A second thermos for the chilled milk? Or is that too obvious?

My local tree is harvested through permission. It's in the front garden of a conversion into flats. last year I asked the residents if they minded me having some and had to explain to them all what they were. None of them wanted to 'risk' eating things off a tree!! Is there no hope for mankind? They don't travel well which is why never for sale. Would chilling work? And, yes, I came home covered in juices daily..perhaps this year a plastic kiddies bib?

..the local tree has them really dark red today..only another day or two to go...

I call this one 'You can't beat Death' Cyprus: Early morning and on the way to breakfast. I love those buffet breakfasts in hotels with the opportunity to pig out almost endlessly on fruit, pastries and bacon and swill several cups of coffee on the terrace with a morning ciggy or two. I was carrying the cup back from a refill and on my way to the terrace when I spotted a tourist brochure. The cover had a picture of a flamingo. I like big birds and flamingos are cool with the way the shrimp colour makes them go pink. Amongst daft looking birds the pelican and the flamingo rank pretty high but the flamingo probably wins. Let's face it if you spend your life standing on one leg in shallow water then go the whole way and dye yourself girlie pink! Why didn't I know that Cyprus was famous for the flamingos on it's salt lakes? OK, accept I'm thick but this was the first I'd heard of them and I had often wondered about going to see flamingo in Africa just because the sight of tens of thousands of silly pink birds has to be worth the trip. I showed the brochure to my wife V and trotted off to ask the receptionist more. Flamingos in Cyprus pass through on their migration and aren't permanent residents so Receptionist kindly rang the tourist bureau to see if the flamingo were at home. Result. We finished breakfast, loaded up the Deathmobile and shipped out for Larnaca. Deathmobile behaved itself pretty well en route. It was all metaled roads along the coast and only eighty odd miles to drive. Once one got used to the way it swayed around bends with the chassis swinging off the axles before the springs snapped it back somewhere later along the straight that is. And once one had got used to the screeching fan belt every time we had to stop and start. Otherwise it was a quiet trip. I was looking forwards to seeing the flamingos. Flashbacks of massive flocks of thousands of busy birds crowded together and flights of hundreds taking off and landing into the crowds raced through my memories of TV documentaries. This was going to be cool. We found the turning that takes one through parts of the Force's base and then curls around to the salt lake. I was ready for my wild flamingo flocks. We drove along the side of the salt lake and peered eagerly for the first glimpse. Nothing. I stopped the car and got out and consulted the map. It was the right place. There was the salt lake miles out in front. It's so shallow it's easy to see bottom stretching away. And away in the distance I could see a few small black dots. Flamingos? It wasn't the thousands I had come to see and after driving eighty miles the five black dots weren't even flamingo-like this far away. Why were they right in the middle too? V was laughing at my demands to see pink. Then I pointed out that we must have hired a 4x4 for a reason and I was going to get close enough to see these flamingos in colour. Five black dots wasn't enough. So over the earth bank we went and splashed the Deathmobile into the water. Deathmobile chugged and gurgled in the salt lake quite happily. I had the door open to watch the water level against the sills and listen to the struggling exhaust. It might be embarrassing to ring Kosta-a-lot cars and have to explain that Deathmobile had drowned. The bottom stayed firm as Deathmobile swam out to sea but those black dots weren't getting any bigger. I stayed in low gear and pushed my luck until the dots became pink dots and V shrieked. She's like that when her feet get wet and it's a bit annoying. I suppose she was right. We were out in the middle of the salt lake and the exhaust was spitting and spluttering and the ripples were washing over the sills and the dots were pink. So I turned Deathmobile back to the shore. Up on the other side of the banking I parked Death on the slope and opened the doors to let the water run out. Most of it was running out through the floor anyway which was probably why quite so much had got in in the first place. A Cypriot woman was walking down the road pushing a pram. I asked her where the flamingos were. "They are right behind you." she said "Oh, they've gone. They were there an hour ago."

Anyone who really needs to get fit is welcome to come round to my place. Run here to get yourselves warmed up and then it's 'knees bend, grasp weed, pull' More seriously it depends entirely on what you're trying to achieve and how much self discipline you have: bodybuilding, body strength or fitness. In my heyday one picked the sport you loved and worked at it. Now if you want to be an athlete it's go to loughborough, get tested and they'll tell you want sport to do depending on muscle type and physiology...

..handy for some ice...:-)

I'll call this one 'One for the Road'. "How about Cyprus this time?" My wife, V, asked. So we went. It was October in Paphos and the day we landed it was obvious that Paphos itself wasn't going to entertain us. The town is just a tourist enclave with a tiny beach, tourist shops and Bars and Restuarants selling English food. Cyprus is a country riddled with history and we wanted to see it so we hired a car. Kostas cars looked best value. We came to call our rental 'Kost-a-lot's Deathmobile' This was a small, girlie 4x4 with suspension that swayed, corroded floor plates and waivers on the insurance so that the sump, tyres and suspension weren't covered. All the rentals were much the same. About the only thing it was worth doing in one of these cars was killing someone. You were insured for that; so long as the accident had nothing to do with the sump, suspension, tyres or anything else mechanical! I refused to hire it without a test drive. My test drive involved screaming up the road with a slipping fan belt and slamming on the brakes. V peeled herself off the windscreen and swore at me but at least the important bits worked. We signed. Sometime later the suspension pulled the car body back onto the axles. Metaled roads in Cyprus are fine. There's one that goes around the island and one that goes across. All the other roads are crushed rock. We picked a small town on the map, not too far away, and with a glance at the sun for a general heading aimed the car and set off for some country views and tea. Driving along was a gentle affair. This was all about chugging up and down small rolling hills looking at the vineyards braided like corn rows and flat roofed stone and daub dwellings. My wife screamed. I don't know why she does that. It's quite off-putting when I'm hitting the brakes anyway. Some kiddie on a bicycle had just freewheeled down a hillside and shot in front of the car. It was probably the one thing we were insured for but might have been a bit rough on the kid so I swerved the Deathmobile round him as the brakes were doing their thing. No problem. I don't drive fast through hillside villages, narrow tracks and packed shacks. Back out into farm land and around the hillside. My wife screamed. I don't know why she does that. It's quite off-putting when I'm hitting the brakes anyway. The road had vanished. Just on the bend and there was no road. I got out to look. The road had fallen off the hillside. There were a few feet of sudden drop where there must have been a small landslide some time ago. I hopped down and walked ahead. Around the next bend the road was back where it belonged and the way up was sloping rather than the sharp drop I stopped at. I strolled back to the Deathmobile, backed her up and took a run. We jumped the drop and chugged around the bend and up the slope. Sometime later the suspension pulled the car body back onto the axles. We found the small town. I think it was closed. There was no sign of life. Perhaps everyone had fallen off the hillside and just left the houses? So much for tea. Any married man knows that this is the time their wife starts complaining. Yes ,they want a drink and, yes, they want a pee. And yes, it's all my fault. I drove on in silence. I say silence; I was silent but V was just getting warmed up. Around a gentle bend in a grove of trees I spotted a turning with a colourful Cyrillic sign pointing down a track. It looked promising so I pulled in. Down in a picturesque dell with a bubbling spring the trackway opened to a wide driveway with a broad, laden fig tree, a huge vine covered pergola over a large patio area with a couple of tables in front of a whitewashed single storey adobe house. If I was ever going to build a small restaurant in the country then I'd want it to look just like this. We seated ourselves at the table but after waiting a short time we wandered in to find some service. I'd opened a couple of doors and found V the loo and then met an old lady. I reckoned she could have been Aphrodite herself. She certainly looked about three thousand years old and with a nice smile and was pretty spritely for a someone that age. But then goddesses are immortal even if they don't age too well. She spoke in the ancient language of the Gods - or it might have just been modern Greek. But either way we had a problem. Lots of sign language later and she went off to fetch some tea and munchies while wifey finished her comfort break and I grazed on figs and grapes. We sat and drank our tea and I tried to engage Aphrodite in conversation. It didn't go so well with the language barrier and was mostly lots of gesticulation and smiling and nodding. We finished our tea and I tried to pay. This was also a problem with lots more head shaking and gesticulation. In the end I shoved some money under my saucer, smiled, said 'thank you' politely and we left. As we drove away V looked at me and said. "I don't think that was a restaurant."

Outsiders view.. I like the fruit tree idea but not so much for front gardens..too tempting for the local yobbery and tends to leave squishy stuff all over the pavement. How about a filbert..they prune hard back and controllably and would take a long time to cause any nuisance? Or an almond if one can find a curl resistant variety and want pretty flowers? Or even a fig if one builds it a proper fig pit first to slow it down and that's something you can butcher almost to the ground if necessary - I like figs - Ive just got 9 rooted cuttings here to take with me on my move - should keep me 'busy' <g>

Another non-arb jumping in with some comments. The original question was duty of care. I'd break that down into the following: The arb called to deal with the tree has made an assessment (right or wrongs apart) that the tree constitutes concern. The local TO over-rules that and therefore must be taking responsibility. A responsibility will also still rest with the trees owner who is in the position to assess further change. As far as backside-covering goes the arb should document those concerns where genuinely felt and write to the TO requesting written confirmation of the TO's position. Both should ask the owner to keep a watching brief and report any changes they see. Another way of looking at this is to take further advice and since you all must be carrying insurance then the insurance company is not a bad place to start... to find out there position on these matters - since they carry the cash if everyone else is wrong. In my profession such issues would be dealt with both by contact with our indemnity providers and also by calling our professional conduct/legal department to check any ethical position. I know the answer would be another more specialised opinion..and the owner wouldn't want to pay. Then it comes down to whether the owner is insured and their insurance will pay or whether the indemnity insurance will pay for that opinion.

Jungle book We're still in St Lucia and my wife decided that she was bored and needed some exercise. She had been reading tourist guides and had found a rainforest walk that she quite fancied. So we fired up the hire car and off we went. Most of the roads in St Lucia are very good. None of the pothole fun stuff of our early Jamaican travels so we made great time for the first part of the trip. The difficulty started when we had to hunt for the turning to the walk. Several false starts and then a little luck from a local resident and we left the highway and into the hills. I'm used to driving on Caribbean dirt tracks but this one was extreme. There were a few times I just had to get out to check the wheel spacing on the ruts and the clearance on the sump but perseverance won and we made it to the starting point. There was actually a hut there with a jungle ranger come guide. He had got there by tractor. We discussed the walk but he admitted it was well signed and a guide wasn't really necessary. So we left alone. We were very much alone. Mine had been the only other vehicle parked by the hut. The walk was supposed to be a few miles long and a circular route that finished where it started. It also started out as really easy going. It was all steps cut into the muddy hillside with a thin stick and two uprights holding the edge in place. Step after step downhill. Each step had it's own bright yellow land crab king but they were the only animals we saw. They call it rainforest because it's so muggy and humid. You can't sweat properly and might as well shed any shirts and let the sweat run. I stopped counting the steps when we got to difficult numbers and just stayed with looking at the palm trees and spotting the odd break in the canopy when I could see the sky. There were a lot of steps. A mile and a half of steps later we got to the bottom of the valley. Here the reward is a beautiful waterfall and pool. Plenty of time for a cool swim and a laze before tackling the second half. The only problem with going downhill is the inevitable uphill. More steps. Another couple of miles of steps. The novelty wears off after the first half mile. Then it's step, step, step. And the legs start to feel it. We cheered ourselves up with thoughts of how fit we would feel afterwards. I cheered myself up more by thinking about all the beers I would need to rehydrate. Step, step, step. Even the crabs looked tired. Step, step, step. But then daylight ahead and an open field! We followed the path across it and there was a dirt track T at the end. Left or Right? I had no way of orientating myself after 3 hours in the jungle. All I could tell was that it was generally getting a bit gloomier and early evening. The sun was down behind the hills somewhere. We thought we might have walked more rights than lefts and that would mean the start should be right. A quarter mile later and yet another bend ahead and yet again so sign of the hut and car park. We walked back to the crossroads. Time to try the left option. A quarter mile later and yet another bend ahead and yet again no sign of the hut or car park. We walked back to the crossroads. My wife was starting to look worried. I scampered straight ahead across the next meadow but when I cleared the rise there was just more hills ahead. I walked back to the crossroads. It was getting gloomier. There was only one sensible option left: to go back the way we had come. It was easy going to begin with. It was downhill. It was all steps with little yellow land crabs. We could feel it in our thighs as we walked step, step, step.. At the bottom of the valley is a pool and waterfall. So what? Rinse your head and shirt in it and don't mess about. It was dark enough here last time. Now I can see very little - except for steps. And guess what? All these steps are uphill. Step, step, step. I could hear my wife puffing behind me. I could feel my thighs burning. I wasn't even interested in my wife's thighs any more. Anyway she was crying now. Step, step, step. I was using my hands to push down on my thighs. Step, step, step. My wife had stopped crying. She couldn't afford to waste the tears or the breath. Step, step, step. I was trying work out the best way to cook land crab and Palm tree and how to light a fire in rainforest while I pushed down against my thighs and stepped, stepped...and then the end! Yay! The last step and the hut with a little moonlight bouncing off it's roof. Our car still in the car park. Alone. Surprisingly, there was a coloured chap in the hut. He had gathered some coconuts from the surrounding trees and kindly sold me a jelly coconut to drink. I asked him where the end of the path came out up here at the top. "Easy man. It's just over a quarter mile that way." Doh!

I'm not sure that a union is going to get a self-employed person paid by a private client. What are they going to do? Picket a suburb over a few hundred pounds? The best your going to get is a union affiliated lawyer giving you 'free' advice in exchange for your union dues. A union is best placed when it come to negotiating between a large group of employees and a huge business subset...such as working rules for you guys doing line clearance work. I suspect you can get affiliated to another general union anyway if that's what you want but general employment law and H&S rule cover most of your stuff. The greatest benefit of unionising is if you want to develop your own set of minimum working regs..such as hourly rates, specialised safety issues you feel are inadequate and perhaps use combined powers to negotiate union specials on health insurances and the like. As part of a larger general union it's likely that the union won't be that bothered about this small group of members..except for taking your dues in exchange for some of these small benefits. If you create your own small union then it may lack voice, will need officers to run it and someone has to pay for their time and accept the restrictions it also imposes on you. It's also divisive between bosses and workers and will become it's own animal. Inevitably it's going to want to discipline rogue members and then later get sucked into the PC transparency of having lay members on committees and such like. It's the way my own profession went: we gave away more than we ever got back.

Remember this title: Watch out. My wife and I went to St Lucia for a holiday. I love the Caribbean and we'd been to Jamaica a couple of times and thought we'd try somewhere else for a change; because I always got into trouble in Jamaica. Perhaps I'll tell you about that sometime. St Lucia is the quiet one. Except that we got the feeling it was less the quiet one and more the one where everything is hidden from the tourists. Nothing was ever quite as real as I expect of the Caribbean. Am I the only one that has to go looking for a Ghetto? I wanted some real curried goat and the hotel food didn't do a goat justice. There was only one ghetto on the island that I ever found. Raw, rough and smelling of decent food. In we went to the shanty shacks and colourful language and total lack of any lighting. It was dark. I was in my usual Caribbean holiday clothes: bare feet, swim bottoms and a t-shirt. We were strolling down one of the narrow walkways between cast-off garden sheds that corrode and rot their way as somewhere to scratch a living when a large black guy menacing a machete jumped in front of me and demanded my watch. I tried explaining that all I wanted was a curried goat dinner and no trouble but he insisted on my watch! "OK", I said. "I'm not going to fight you for my watch." I took it off and handed it to him. "But before you run away with it," I went on."Have a good look at it. It's a piece of rubbish I bought in Argos and the strap's going." He inspected the watch and replied. "This is crap, man. I don't want this." "Well can I have it back, please? It's the only watch I've got." He gave it back to me and said. "I suppose you're going to call the police now?" "No" I said. "What's the point? What am i going to tell them? That some black man tried to rob me?" "So what you gonna do, man?" He persevered. "I'll tell you what" I said. "I've got a couple of dollars in my pocket. I'll buy you a beer." "Why you buying me a beer when i tried to rob you?" "Well if I went to the police I'd never be able to come back to the ghetto again without a risk that I might have to fight you. This way we have a couple of beers, stay friends and you can tell your mates I'm not worth robbing."

Artichokes are big thistles

If they'll grow then how about putting some artichokes in to keep them company?

I can't resist: that's 800 bags in the fourth dimension! So for the next 800 years?

..could that be the battery powering a probe behind the unit?

Keep those memories coming :-)

Say Nothing Part 3 Sergeant poured me a mug from his thermos. Wife was looking grey and didn't want any. She told me later that the squaddies and the blast doors had made her think we were going to prison. I was relaxed since I figured I had done stuff pretty much by the book. I told my story to Sergeant and then he rang his commander. Commander wasn't in a very good mood. It was the night of the big military dinner and he had just been pulled away from his main course to deal with an invasion of his high security military airbase by two unarmed English people and a Grumman AA5A single-engined sports plane. I told my story to Commander. From the tone of his voice he sounded a little upset that he couldn't just have me shot. I think his main course must have been getting cold. I handed the phone back to Sergeant who was given strings of instructions to pass on to me. I don't speak Danish but I think they included things like 'If you get an excuse shoot him." Main course must have been a good one. Sergeant was loving it. This wasn't just another boring weekend of boring duty sitting in his office deep underground. I got offered another cup of tea. Bilund Air Traffic Control rang Sergeant and I was given a special radio frequency to try and use and special instructions to land there just before airport closing time. Sergeant gave us a lift back to the plane. I couldn't see a lot of point in taxiing all the way back to the runway and Sergeant was quite happy for me to take off from the slip road. We shook hands and I took off. Flying to Bilund was a non-event. Even the radio worked! At Bilund the security folk called their big chief and I had to talk to him over the phone. I told my story again. Big Chief explained that they had changed all the Bilund frequencies at 5pm. Didn't I realise? Er, no! Big Chief explained that the first military zone had closed for the weekend after I flew through it. Big Chief explained that I was out of range of Copenhagen information after that. And apparently they don't monitor 121.5 over land at the weekends. Foreigners! Big Chief explained that Bilund Control Tower was located in an odd position compared to British Control Towers but they had seen me on radar and had been shining lights at me but they weren't going to circle a whole bunch of Jumbos just for one idiot Englishman! Big Chief explained that he would have his tech folk check my radios and the rest of the plane. (they did a lovely job..even washed the windscreen). Big Chief said he had decided not to press charges and asked if I wanted him to fix us up with a hotel. What could I say? Wife and I grabbed our cases and got shown to a taxi. On the drive into town the taxi driver got chatty. Had we heard about all the excitement at Bilund Airport than day? He had driven two pilots into town earlier and both had been full of a story about some completely insane pilot in a light aircraft flying head on at one Jumbo after another? My wife whispered "Say nothing."

We'll call it 'Say nothing.' Part 2 After playing chicken with the joy riders at the tower we went back to the main runway and played chicken with another couple of Jumbos. They kept coming and I kept having to pop back up out of the way. It was getting a tad samey and it was also getting to be a bit of a worry. Back in the good ol' UK I'd have expected someone to let the poor pilot without a radio land - foreigners! I consulted my map. Not too far away was another military field. But the map clearly said it was a no-fly zone. Never mind, I figured that might be safer so hopped over there. Radar would know where I'm going? It was a big field but looked quiet. I could see the control tower easily and reprised my wing waggling, circling trick. Sigh. No lights, no flags. To heck with it, I Ianded. I taxied to the tower. No-one home. By now my wife is getting on my case. Did I mention she hated flying? "Well get out and find someone", she said. I patiently pointed out that we'd just landed on a high security military airbase without permission and while that's bad enough I didn't figure that walking around it taking holiday snaps was too good an idea. I pulled the canopy open. It was hot and sunny, I was sweating and my T-shirt was getting ripe. So in British tradition I tied knots in the corners of a handkerchief, popped it on my head and settled for a doze. And that's exactly how the 2 lorry-loads of airforce squaddies found us a half hour or so later. One naggy wife and one sweaty Englishman with a very smelly t-shirt and a hanky on his head. The squaddies were mostly a friendly bunch. I knew that because mostly they kept their rifles shouldered. Except for one or two. We climbed in the back of a lorry and got driven to a chasm in the ground. Enormous blast doors with feet thick steel had seperated to show rather smart fighter aircraft neatly rowed up deep underground. Heck, this was still before the Berlin Wall came down. I've admitted my thinking isn't always quick but I got the idea this place might be important. We drove on through to the back of the place and were marched into a small office. A sergeant was siting at his desk reading through a book. He looked up and said "I've just been reading up on the rules. It says here that if someone invades my airbase then I detain them or shoot. But if a distressed pilot makes a landing then I'm to provide every aid and help." I managed a weak smile. "I think I'd rather be a distressed pilot. I'm not too hot on the etiquette of invasion." "Oh good," he said "Would you like a cup of tea and a sandwich?" <part 3 later>