Navanman and The Tree

Head Rambles Posted on by 2

I decided to do a little clearing on Friday.

For various reasons I want to clear space in the garage, but was hindered by an amazing selection of cardboard boxes and crates. Why is it that when some company wants to send you something small, they pack it in a massive box full of scrumpled brown paper?

So I attacked all the boxes and crates with a very sharp knife and produced a huge pile of flat cardboard. I filled the back of the car completely [an estate car with the rear seat flattened to give you an idea of the quantity]. A quick trip to the recycling centre in Skobieville and that was that.

Yesterday Daughter arrived with Navanman [an excellent replacement for Husband]. Her idea was to help with cutting up the cardboard and to get rid of it. But of course I had already done it. She decided to mow the lawn instead. But this left Navanman twiddling his thumbs and anxious to do something.

I should explain that Navanman is extremely enthusiastic about the Manor and loves nothing more than helping around the place. Ask him to trim the hedge a little and he will proceed to trim every hedge on the property and won’t stop until it’s all done and tidied. So there he was yesterday almost in tears that there was nothing for him to do.

“How about the tree?” says he.

I have a tree that is weird and beautiful. I haven’t a clue what it is and I love it apart from its weird growth pattern. It starts in the front garden. It then ties its trunk in knots and then shoots off horizontally in various directions before changing and growing vertically instead. Its highest point is in the back garden about twenty feet away from its starting point. Anthows one of the trunks had decided to grow towards the garage meaning everyone had to duck under it to get to the back garden. Even worse, it was starting to press against the garage wall and had also grown around the telephone [broadband] cable. I had idly talked in the past about removing this particular trunk of the tree but it was a massive job.

Massive job or not, Navanman decided to do it, and nothing I could say would dissuade him. He attacked it with loppers and saws and shaved all the branches off the lower part. The trunk now looked somewhat strange – a bare[ish] trunk leading up to a bottle-brush top. Removing the top part [about fifteen foot of it] meant pushing from one side using a ladder on the garage roof and pulling on a rope down at ground level while I cut through the trunk with a chainsaw, again standing on the garage roof. This was an interesting exercise as potentially we could drop the tree through the garage roof, drop the tree on top of daughter, drop the tree on top of Navanman or crown me with the ladder. Miraculously the tree fell exactly where we wanted it to go.

I left them to it. The tree, or rather a large part of it, is now removed almost to ground level. I can now walk through in safety and the garage wall is now no longer threatened with demolition during a storm. Navanman had cut up all the bits and dumped them in a massive heap down in the North Wood.

I keep telling Daughter: he’s a keeper!

The new stump and a knot. The tree root is way off to the left.
Part of the tree at the back and the side path.
Any ideas on its make and model? It’s an evergreen with red flaky [very attractive] bark.
 

A plague on your conspiracies

Head Rambles Posted on by 13

There is something very strange going on.

First of all we started hearing about an abnormal number of kids coming down with Hepatitis and liver failure. Nasty! But these were apparently unconnected with each other – just scattered around through various countries.

Now we have a series of cases of Monkey Pox. Frankly this is something I have never even heard of. Chicken Pox? Yup. Cow Pox? Yup. Monkey Pox? What? Is there a whole series of poxes out there I have never heard of? Elephant Pox? Dolphin Pox? Squirrel Pox? The mind boggles.

Like the Hepatitis, the cases of Monkey Pox seem to be completely random, and just appear in different and unrelated spots [sorry – I couldn’t resist that]. Why is there a sudden rash of these cases? [sorry – I couldn’t resist that either]

What disappoints me is that I haven’t heard any conspiracy theories about these outbreaks. Come on lads! What’s holding you back? How about 5G? Or jet-trails? Have Aliens been dropping fever bombs at random places? Is it an Islamic plot? Here is an area that is beautifully ripe for outlandish theories yet I haven’t heard a single one.

Where are the Conspiracy Theorists when you need them?

 

Wanking bankers

Head Rambles Posted on by 7

I have little regard for the banking system here.

Once upon a time [are you sitting comfortably, children?] I could phone my local bank branch and have a simple query answered. But those days are long gone. Without exception, banks now rely on call-centres, automated phone systems and extremely clunky websites.

I have completed my move away from Ulster Bank and it really is a case of good fucking riddance.

The move wasn’t without a lot of stress, frustration and sheer anger at the system but I consider myself to be extremely lucky. I am lucky because I owed Ulster Bank nothing, have a lot of time to spare, have broadband and am reasonably computer literate. That is a clutch of circumstances which is very rare and if I had missed out on even one of those I would have been rightly in the shit.

The latest from Ulster is that anyone who has an overdraft or loan has six months to pay up, or else they’ll be at the mercy of some loan shark or vulture fund. Fuck! If I owed a few grand on an overdraft there is no way I could pay it off. Surely if I were able, then I wouldn’t have an overdraft in the first place?

What about the old folk Down West who have their pension paid into the bank? Switching the Social Services account would be an absolute nightmare for them. It wasn’t easy for me and involved a lot of legwork, red tape and phone calls not to mention delving into websites. So what about the Old Folk who have no broadband [and probably no Interwebs]? I doubt they would even realise what is involved. I sincerely hope they aren’t relying on Ulster or Social Services to do anything for them.

The bank I have moved to weren’t that hot either but they were the best I could find. Opening the accounts also led to a ton of red tape and once again I am at the mercy of their fucking phone system. Their one redeeming feature is Rebecca.

Rebecca works in my local branch and she phoned me a while back with a query about a file I had submitted previously [the bloke I had been dealing with fucked it up by only half scanning a document!]. She gave me her email address so I re-scanned the document and sent it off to her. I heard nothing back. A couple of days ago I sent her another email asking if my scan was okay and within minutes she had phoned me to say everything is fine and she’s dealing with the latest update herself. She is cheerful, apologetic and eager to help and said that I could mail her any time I had a query or problem. That is what I call service!

In the meantime, Ulster haven’t even bothered their arses to officially inform me they are closing.

Help me move? You must be fucking joking!

Wankers.

 

Behind closed doors

Head Rambles Posted on by 5

Many years ago we lived in the hell hole that is Suburbia.

It was an in between period between moving out of Wicklow and moving back in again.

The house that we lived in was in a typically bland, huge, characterless estate with all the houses crammed as close as possible. When you’re used to open spaces, Suburbia is damned crowded.

At the time I had a very nice stereo system. It was one of those modular ones with an amplifier, a turntable, a twin cassette deck, a tuner and of course the speakers [a mixture of Sansui and Sony, if anyone is interested]. Naturally I had this set up in the living room.

One day – it must have been at the weekend as normally I’d be at work – I was messing with the tuner switching between stations when a voice boomed out of the speakers. What was weird was that I recognised the voice. It was one of our neighbours. He would talk for a while and then there would be a period of silence before he spoke again. I realised I was listening to his cordless telephone.

I was in a sticky situation. Should I carry on listening or should I do the decent thing and respect his privacy? Of course I listened in! What was interesting was that I knew his Missus went off to some group every week and that Neighbour was talking to someone else. Even more interesting was the tone of the conversation – all lovey dovey and how he couldn’t wait to meet her again. So Neighbour had a Ride-on-the-Side? The dirty git! Fair play to him.

Herself caught me doing my little eavesdropping session. She castigated and chastised me for being so nosey and then took a note of the frequency for herself. Sure enough she occasionally tuned in and reported back to me. Neighbour’s Missus apparently phoned her sister on a regular basis and spent the entire sessions giving out yards about her husband – how he was a miserable old shit and mean with the money and how she loved the peace and quiet when he was out of the house. She referred to him as “The Old Bastard” or occasionally as “The Old Fucker”.

So he was off shagging his bit of fluff while she hated his guts? A fairly typical marriage?

What was very interesting was that this couple gave the appearance of the extremely happy couple. As far as the world was concerned they had the perfect marriage in the perfect house. They did everything together [especially when gardening in the front] and had bought a little caravan so they could go off on little holidays together. They chatted away together in the garden and there was never a cross word. They were well known in the estate as a very close couple. They were picture perfect.

Strange how the radio told a different story…..

Heh!