Force Of Habit

I keep wandering down to the shed and looking inside to see if there are any rabbits. There never are. In fact there's absolutely nothing because shortly after they "disappeared" I hoiked everything out and had an enormous bonfire. 

Chainsaws In The Morning

Matthew and his crew are here taking down a spruce that was gradually falling over in the direction of our neighbour's chain link fence.

Our neighbour happens to manufacture chain link fencing. He's very rich. He also keeps alpacas and runs the pub at the end of the road. Don't want to annoy him.

One of Matt's crew is a young chap with the wispy beginnings of a beard who's training with the TA. He says he'll get his HGV licence out of it. He had his name down to go to Afghanistan but the tour of duty clashed with a family christening so he's going to unvolunteer. Apparently it's that easy when you're TA.

Not like if you're a regular and they bang you in the glasshouse and do beastly things to you.

And this government wants the TA to replace the regular army. Suppose we started a war and all the TA chaps found they had family christenings to attend!

Actually he said he wanted to go and it's a bummer that he can't. He's got a mate who's been in the army 20 years or more and is now a sniper with 48 confirmed kills. How do you confirm them? You trek across the dusty in-between ground and make sure there's actually a body there. He's done that 48 times. (And I'm still a bit shaky from seeing the aftermath of a fox attack).

One good thing about this rather expensive business: Matt's going to trim the trunk and leave it in place. It happens to have fallen in the very spot where there's the most fabulous view across the Weald to the North Downs, with Hadlow Castle to the left of the picture.  Don't think of it as losing a tree but gaining a garden bench.