The Chipper Rules

This blip tells a story of today. Hot on the heels of having the central heating system replaced, we had people in to take down oversized leylandii in preparation for them putting up a new fence in the back garden. When the job was estimated, we were told to order a 6 yard skip, which arrived on Thursday.

However, the size of the trees had been underestimated a bit and, like a scene from Jaws, they quickly realised that, "We're going to need a bigger skip."

Bit of lateral thinking and a few phone calls later the green chipper in the skip was hired to chip the branches so that they used up less space in the skip. This was to avoid another £200 on another skip. Oh dear! The chipper was pathetic and wanted branches no bigger than your average pooh stick to be fed in one at a time or else it just jammed up.

Then a brainwave on the part of one of the guys, who made a phone call and called in a favour. This beast arrived on site and within minutes was making mincemeat of the leylandii. This was a most satisfying end to the existence of these awful trees (we inherited them by the way, as we would not have planted them) that seemed determined not to be destroyed.

The trees continued to cause problems and one of them was embedded in concrete. Why? Why? Why? Obviously some previous resident of this house was determined to cause problems for future residents.

Anyway there is more to be done tomorrow but we have already reclaimed a large part of our garden, and our neighbours no longer live in the permanent shade.