Mick Dempsey

Not since the death of The Night King at the hand of Arya have I felt such relief at an evil force meetIng its rightful end.

We got Charlie as a rescue (well the owners had moved back to the UK and couldn’t take her) She lit up our lives. Dont discount re-homing

I was surprised by how tall it was, I believe the word is ‘attenuated’ It was surrounded by crappy thuyas (that I took down last year) that made it grow tall and straight with no significant branches till 40/50 ft. Of course that actually make a dismantle easier, as you could rope stuff off and run it a bit without fear of smashing anything. Nice day, 25 degrees, light breeze, everyone in a good mood. Enjoy it while you can!

Back in time for Lorraine then?

Seems that you’re putting a lot of effort into saving a bit of stock fencing Don, but nice work anyway. As luck would have it some ash for me today as well, this one was solid enough, but in reach of the house, and recent storms had worried the owner, once he realised removal was as cheap as reduction, out it came.

What you could do is get the climber to work one side of the trees all the way down the line say, road side first, then move the chipper/truck into the garden and do that side.

Then that’ll be the fly in the ointment. Find somewhere closer to tip, so everyone is working efficiently all the time.

Thoughts. Pollarding limes is easy-peasy on the climber, he will outpace the grounds man who won’t keep up, even though it’s easy chipping. Solution: Two (or even three) groundsmen. How far is the tip site? That’ll be the biggest bottleneck.

I just use two bowlines with a bight.

Cheap Chinese one probably brittle and just as likely to break, wouldn't bother with that. When they fall out of a tree, it doesn’t matter who made it.

Not sure what’s going on.. Anyway, good old fashioned soap is ok for me, takes a little time, but once it’s been in hot water for a while it comes off easy enough.

If it works, it works. I am lazy when it comes to getting stuff off the net, I’ll just drop into the dealer and get them to order one if it fails.

Penny saved, penny earned, and all that bollox. 2511 reporting for duty Monday morning after some heavy handed Friday shenanigans.

How did you get that little R next to the word Swarfega?

That’s a shame, but an older brother can help.

I can’t remember ever posting this, plus it’s not like me to use multiple question marks.

Sometimes in the half sleep/half wake thing that I have from about 3am onwards I dream random stuff, cars, pets, houses from the past. I often half wake up and think ‘I must ask Dad about that, he’ll remember‘ then, as I wake fully, it dawns on me that I can’t anymore and all over again I realise he’s gone. Same for everyone I guess.

That is a hell of a callback Khriss.

My old man went in 2014, just turned 87. Just enjoy the moments you can have with him now.

Sorry to hear this.

@Ty Korrigan Plan is he’s coming here to live and work. He is a decent rugby player so hé will join a club down the road, which will help with finding friends and a bird. It may not work out, but we’ll give it a shot.

Yes, I think I’ve seen that vid.

Horsey birds are ok, as long as you realise you’re always second to a horse. Unless you have money, in which case you can fund their horses.

My nephew is doing a course at Kingswood at the moment and enjoying it from what I gather. Got me a bit nostalgic about my 10 weeker at Merrist wood in ‘95. These days in the age of social media everyone will at least know how to contact others later on, but in ‘95 we all just drifted off to the different parts of the world with a ‘see you around’ on the final day. I wonder how many are still in the tree game? Some distinct memories I have are how testosterone fueled it was, we were nearly all quite young and physically fit so wrestling matches were common, sometimes quite edgy with the need of a submission before it would stop. I was a total newbie, but a few of the students were already very accomplished and just doing it for the tickets, which was a bit dispiriting as you can imagine. Jack Kenyon ran the course and he was pretty dismissive if you weren’t progressing after a few days climbing, I came pretty close to being left behind (the instructors marking you down as not worth the effort) but pulled it out the bag one day. The practicals at Windsor Great Park where we were dismantling Turkey oaks were a bit dodgy to say the least, I remember skinning the inside of my forearms really badly when spiking up a trunk, large sections falling from great heights near people wandering around, you had to keep your wits about you. All in all a great experience, anyone else cast their mind back to things that stick in their heads from college?