I have been doing a little light hedge trimming lately.

This may conjure up an image of an old gentleman with a pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth gently snip snip snipping away at a manicured hedge with a pair of clippers, but you'd be wrong.

Hedge trimming in this household involves ladders, chainsaws, power clippers, heavy duty cutters and a hell of a lot of blood, sweat and swearing.  And that's only herself.  And she was doing the easy bits at the bottom.

Once upon a time in the not too distant past our neighbour used to complain about the dog jumping onto the hedge and sitting on it [no kidding – must have been uncomfortable?] so I decided to let it grow up a little bit.  It grew from around four or five foot high to around ten or twelve feet and I couldn't reach the top of it any more so it grew even higher.  Anyhows I decided enough was enough when it started interfering with the overhead cables so I have been attempting to tame it by hacking it back down to arount six foot.

So that's what I have been at for the last few days.

I took a rest yesterday to do some Grandchild Minding for the afternoon.

For those of you not in the know, I now have four of 'em.  There's Laughingboy who is just turned sixteen [but can’t look after his siblings as he is severely disabled], Puppychild who is nearly twelve, Sir Fartzalott who is seven and Squidge who is eighteen months.  There is also a huge dog, a very lively kitten and a rat.  There used to be two rats, but one escaped from his cage and made a nest for himself in the padded insulation lining the oven in the kitchen.  I'm sure he was very happy there until the next baking session.  Sometimes I can still detect the lingering odour of roast rat.

It was actually a very peaceful afternoon.  Squidge slept for the whole three hours [that old Calpol trick still works after all these years].  Laughingboy just sat happily listening to something on his earphones and there wasn't a peep out of him apart from the odd chuckle.

Usually Puppychild and Sir Fartalott are the noisy ones but after about ten minutes, Puppychild got bored with me, robbed her parents' laptop and retired to her bedroom to sell her body on-line, which I think shows a remarkable maturity for a [nearly] twelve year old, wanting to contribute to the family coffers?

So that meant I was left with Sir Fartzalott.  For the first hour I was given lessons on dinosaurs and sharks.  I don't know what it is with that kid but he has a weird fascination with sharks, which frankly I couldn't give a shite about.  However after a [very long] while even he got bored with the subject and we enjoyed silence for about two minutes.

Now Farty [as I call him] has long had a fascination with my pipe [as well as dinosaurs and sharks] so he started quizzing me on it.  I told him all about it, how to clean it, pack it, light it and enjoy it.  It was a very pleasant couple of hours and he was a remarkably attentive pupil.

And I'm delighted to say he prefers Condor to Mellow Virginia.  He says Condor is much righer and less fruity.

I have promised him one of my spare pipes.

He's my Grandson all right.