I can't remember if I've told this story here, but apologies if I'm repeating myself. My apprentice ( AKA Aged Parent ) and I spent a happy Sunday morning removing one dead tree stump, and one very unhealthy one from a client's garden. He was going off to play golf, so paid us before we'd finished ( we'd done work for him before ) and once we were done, we enjoyed our Tesco meal deals for dinner in the sun in the car park.
Monday morning, my phone's red hot! According to our client he'd been " tidying up after us ", when the beautiful laurel bush next door " just fell over in slow motion ". The ones we'd been dealing with were about ten or twelve feet from this, by the way.
It turns out the bush had a fine root structure at the neighbour's side, but one lone root at our client's side.
Which he'd chopped through, in his " tidying ". His neighbour was not happy, and the longer they had to look at their pride and joy lying across the lawn, the less happy they were becoming, so off we went again on a Fire Engine job.
Long story short, nobody home at either house, so we removed the evidence, and sent him a bill. There is a footnote to this tale. We returned to trim the hedge between them later on, and where his shed was, it was impossible to trim from his side, even by lying on the shed roof upside down. As we left, it was obvious that neighbour was home, so we politely knocked on the door, and asked if we could pop in for five minutes to trim it from her side, which would in all honesty have improved her side greatly. Her response?
" I wouldn't p**s on him if he were on fire ". We took that as a " No", and went home.