peds

I don't see what the problem is, to be honest. You called off a job because you don't like getting up early? Do you get itchy feet at one minute past usual finishing time, too? In my previous life 6am starts were normal, and working around the clock wasn't anything special. I have no way of counting the number of times I've left home in the dark and arrived home in the dark, summers included. The job dictates the hours, and if you can't hack it, then sod off and give the job to someone who can.

Hugely impressive, thanks for sharing.

Well, a fence and a license seems a small price to pay for a good rasher every now and then. It does seem a little unnecessary to suggest that you’d want to fence them in to be honest, wild boar have never struck me as the kind of animal who’d stick around under their own volition. The clue is in the name. And yes, they do cause damage. We have them in the forests here, wild wild ones. The evidence they leave is pretty impressive.

Do it, plant a good range of trees, get some fruit trees mixed in there as well, and then release some wild boar into the forest when it’s old enough. This is my retirement plan for bacon.

^^ Very interesting. Any landscape or long shots of the bunker?

Brilliant, thanks for the recommendations, I thought I had put Tree Climbers Companion into my basket the last bit of shopping I did at Northern Arb Supplies, but I was wrong. I'll definitely get that, and at least one of his others. The Andrew Hirons book sounds interesting, I'll look into it. Cheers.

This is Baldric Wonderdog at home in Chamonix, in the Alps. I might be biased, but I tend to think he's pretty freaking rad. He's a bit of a local celebrity, he even has his own instagram page. https://www.instagram.com/baldricwonderdog/

Hey dudes, I've just invested in a Collins Tree Guide, solid and reliable; a copy of "Trees: a complete guide to their biology and structure" by Roland Ennos (which is absolutely fascinating); and Claus Mattheck's "Tree Mechanics, explained with sensitive words by Pauli the Bear" which, despite the easy-to-understand cartoons, is a little above my comprehension and the information is currently bouncing off of my brain like water on a rock, but I can't wait to grasp what the hell it's saying as I get a bit more experience with trees. Can anyone recommend any other titles that I could look out for to help me grow my arborilogical knowledge? Fact, fiction, reference, tangentially-related, any suggestions are gratefully received. Cheers everyone!

^^ That's exactly what we were taught (November last year). They are just cuts that you can use if it looks like the tree needed it, definitely not that they should be used as much as possible. It was tricky trying to squeeze a Danish into some of the smaller trees we were given anyway.

Delicious too, apparently. 50 of them would make a great snack.

Those look brilliant. We've just moved into a property out in the middle of nowhere and have rats up in the attic, but it's proving impossible to block off the entrance points because the property next door is derelict, and we can't use poison because we are smelly hippies. That might have to be an early Christmas present to myself.

An entre-pruneur, if you will.

I read somewhere that it’s an Italian manufacturer, but it doesn’t really matter where it’s from... it was good and cheap!

A lad on my course failed his CS38 because of that, "metal-on-metal"... although to be fair, he failed for several other things as well. He put his spikes on the wrong feet at first. Personally, as a rock climber, I see metal-on-metal all the time and didn't see what the problem is... not that I questioned the assessor about it. If two biners are likely to twist enough for shearing forces to come into play, sure, but I don't see how that is possible when joining two climbers together.

Hey, whatever floats your boat dude, I'm not one to judge. I appreciate where you are coming from with viewing it as a learning process, I have very little experience with small engines (or big ones, come to that), so I definitely see the appeal of getting intimate with a kit build. A few months ago I bought a shitty 100 euro Florabest 50cc chainsaw from Lidl, I'm going to destroy it and put it back together a few times. I'm hoping that it'll help me learn a bit more about how saws in general are put together, and what I can do when they get fucked up. At least with your Chinese kit, I assume they sent some instructions with it... I don't have that luxury!

To be fair though, sitting alone in a dark room rubbing your fingertips across a cheese grater beats watching Strictly Come Dancing.

Well, me for a start... on days with shitty weather I'll take one for tea, and one for soup... I used to try mixing them in one bigger flask, but it just wasn't working.

With the current fashion for zero waste and minimising your use of plastics, thanks to their high content of saponins horse chestnuts are seeing a resurgence in use as various cleaning products, mostly laundry detergent, but also as body soap. Been used in the British Isles and across northern Europe for thousands of years.

It is entirely possible to own more than one flask. One for tea, one for coffee, one for soup.

One of the most famous figures during the golden age of mountaineering here in Chamonix, France, has a drink named after him, "Mummery's Blood", which is equal parts hot Bovril and navy rum, with lashings of powdered black pepper. It was designed to keep people alive whilst they spent frozen nights trapped in a blizzard on towering alpine peaks, days after they'd already eaten the rest of their provisions.

It's simpler these days though, all you have to do is post or email the wrong form. I didn't have to visit a single building when I was wrestling the system a few years ago. Where were you based RH?

How long are you in France for? It's a bit of a nightmare swimming through the whole process of being self employed, especially if your French language skills aren't the best, as the documents and information you need are only available in French (they definitely aren't available in Welsh or Swahili or Tyke or anything, like in the UK). There's a wealth of information online though, and especially in areas with a lot of anglophonic people, you might find someone willing to help with the brunt of the official side of things for a small fee. I just about stumbled through it myself with limited French language skills, but I wish I'd invested a little in someone willing to help, as it would have made the whole process easier. A heads up: tick the wrong box on the wrong form, or ignore one specific form you get sent out of a huge pile of them that you CAN safely ignore (because they are just scam artists trying to suck money from you), and you might wind up with no health insurance, which may or may not turn out to be a big deal later on down the road. Once you are in the system though it's fairly simple, you can just log in to your account on the website and declare your earnings, and it'll calculate your contributions and tax there and then. Most potential employers these days will not even look at you if you aren't auto ent, there's very little work to be done in the black unless you know the right people. A lot of the time employers prefer that you are self employed instead of on contract, because the contributions paid by employers are absolutely huge here. Have a google for "auto entrepeneur advice English" and trawl through what you can find, it's pretty slow going but the more knowledge you can soak up the better. EDIT Oh, and just to add, you don't need a visa right now, and you haven't since we joined the EU. With Brexit looming however, it's going to get a whole lot more difficult very soon, and no-one has any idea what's going to be necessary in the very near future. So, you know, thanks to everyone who voted for that. Big help.