Look at this picture carefully. Yes, it is what you think it is - a field mouse sitting in the dog’s bowl. And OH was sitting in the conservatory not more than six feet away with the door open. Cheeky little beggars, aren’t they?
Just for the record, I like mice, but they do carry diseases which are communicable to humans and also to dogs. Leptospirosis being the most common in this part of the world.
Down near Newmarket, in a village called Kennett, there is a fairly typical English pub called The Bell. It’s a lovely old part-timbered building, much patched and repaired, and it stands on a corner squarely facing the main road. Coming from the north, as we did, the approach is from the rear and the first thing you’ll notice is that there seems to be a pigeon loft built into the rear wall in the shape of a large bell. It’s a reminder of gentler days, so it is, when everyone needed a way to supplement the pot, especially landlords with customers to feed. I imagine that squab pie might have been a popular menu item, along with rabbit and the occasional jugged hare.
The second thing you’ll notice is that cemented into the pavement, at the front right corner of the pub, there is a bell. A real, genuine, honest-to-goodness bell. It seems to be made of cast metal, as bells usually are, and it is rock solid. Immovable. An obstacle to progress. There are no warning signs saying ‘Mind the Bell’. There are no flourescent paint markings or barriers or exhortations such as ‘Do Not Touch The Bell’. There are no admonitions not to let children climb on the bell. And I think it’s wonderful.
Can you imagine getting planning permission for that these days? The politically-correct lobby would have a purple-faced fit! Can you imagine filing an insurance claim? ‘I swerved to avoid a bicycle and hit a bell and that’s how I broke my car’. Yeah, right. Ahahaha! Now, come on, what really happened?
Ah, how I love the eccentricity of humanity! And it’s everywhere - I bet most of you can think of an example. Something so weird that you take it completely for granted, something you hardly notice anymore, but you’ll maybe find tourists gazing at in perplexity? I bet you do.
C’mon, guys and gals - what have you got?
Tell you what - I’ll issue a challenge to five people to find something quirky in their neighbourhood, photograph it and post it on their blog.
Anyone can join in, but here are my five victims.
Spotted at the local Primary School -
My, there must be some scary teachers in there!
You see, there was this tree. An ash tree, to be precise, and its crown was huge, spreading, and full of dead wood and brittle limbs which broke off in the wind and fell on our roof, our cars and our bins … and I was afraid that one day one might fall on me, OH or one of the dogs as we walked out. And the roots were so extensive that they were beginning to push up the tarmac on our forecourt (it would be a front garden except we tarmacked it) and were almost certainly eating into the foundations.
So something over five years ago, OH contacted the farmer who owned the field it was growing in and asked him nicely if he would attend to it, and he chose not to reply. Over those intervening five years, letters have gone back and forth between OH, the farmer and our neighbour, Mr P, who actually owns a driveway running between us and that tree, and a dispute began. The farmer stated that it was not his tree. Mr P stated that it was not his tree, and we knew damn well it most definitely was not our tree, but since it was damaging our property we wanted someone to do something about it. And no-one did.
From where we were standing, it looked like the farmer’s tree, since it was growing in his hedge. Mr P pointed out to the farmer that if it was his tree, then it was also his hedge and did the farmer really want to deed him three feet of land? The farmer did not, and finally admitted it probably was his tree .. but he still did nothing about it.
Getting no joy from direct communication, we contacted his agent. His agent was very helpful, and just a few weeks ago contacted a tree surgeon and arranged for the work to be done. And so it was that yesterday, two very nice young men turned up with a truck, a chipper, and a lot of equipment which looked as if it might make a bondage fan dribble, and one of them shimmied up the tree to pollard it.
I have to say, it was fascinating to watch. The surgeon himself, a young guy who looked hardly big enough to lift a tree-pruning manual, moved among the branches like an acrobat, manipulating huge branches in one hand and nonchalently letting his chain-saw dangle from his belt, while his accomplice apprentice stood below maintaining the rope that stood between him and a seventy-foot drop and chipping the branches dropped down to him.
The work took them most of the day, because it was a big tree, but now the crown is no longer extensive, full of dead wood, or likely to brain someone. The roots, of course, are still there, but will not be growing any bigger and may even shrink a little.
I don’t like pollarding trees, but I like chopping them down even less. At least this way the stout, ivy-clad trunk is left, along with the lower branches, so that the mini-habitat is still there for the birds, small animals and insects who live in it
And next autumn’s gales will hold slightly less dread.
