the signs, I even found where they’d got stuck and had to have another go. (I’m probably an Apache Indian reincarnated as an impoverished dairy farmer.)
I was concerned about who had been about. The keeper usually travels about on his quad bike and has a four-wheel drive vehicle as well, but a quick call on the mobile soon determined that it wasn’t him.
The hares didn’t behave as if someone has been ‘having a go’, you can soon tell, but someone could have been checking to see how many were about. A few years ago a gang used to go up on the top, hare coursing, perhaps they’d been back to have another look. At the moment the keeper shoots about three or four a year strictly for the landlord who will talk eloquently about the delights of jugged hare.
I’M NEVER quite sure of the right word; the word I’m looking for is litigious. I’m trying to find a word that best described the society we find ourselves in. It describes what some people call ambulance chasers, the people who appear on adverts on our television with: ‘Have you had an accident at work?’
Of course I have, who hasn’t, it’s a part of life. When my sonbroke his ankle ice-skating last winter there were two ‘suits’ there getting him to sign disclaimers before the ambulance arrived, and who can blame them? This blame culture has manifested itself in a new way, one that will affect the countryside.
Apparently there are vigilant council employees out there, scrutinising roadside trees. The story goes like this; your council employee spots a tree with a couple of dead branches, it could be a large dead branch which could be dangerous and in need of removal, or it could be a tiny bit of dead branch, about a foot or so long.
A letter is sent to the owner of the tree, questioning the safety of the whole tree and giving the owner 28 days to do something about it, putting the responsibility for any future accidents firmly onto the owner.
The owner of the tree usually takes advice from a tree expert along the lines of ‘Is this tree safe for ever?’ Well no-one in his right mind is going to say ‘yes’ to that. Around here there are 26 healthy oak trees marked up for felling with red crosses on them. There is an established paper trail of passing the buck that ultimately ends with the tree being cut down. If a farmer were to fell 20 trees somewhere it would probably lead to an outcry. But for Health and Safety, it’s apparently OK. No-one wants to see anyone injured by a falling tree, or bough, especially me, but this is all a bit over the top. Where’s the commonsense, where’s the balance?
The past weeks have seen us out and about on our land on a daily basis, as the seasons and the work progresses. After all these years, I still find the views from our top fields remarkable and remind myself on a daily basis how lucky I am to live and work in such an environment. I took some sandwiches and a drink up to our young tractor driver the other day and took the opportunity to take it all in, while I waited for the tractor to go around the fieldand come back to the gateway. When he got off the tractor I told him that we’d got it all wrong, I suggested that it was ridiculous that I was paying him to drive up and down this particular field on such a lovely sunny day, with panoramic views that some people would envy. I went on, quite eloquently, to suggest that it would be much fairer if he paid me for the privilege of doing what he was in such surroundings. He took a sip of tea, thought about it a bit, and said he would rather leave things as they were.
LAST SUNDAY was the Bank Holiday weekend. You probably want to forget it. It didn’t stop raining here all day, it wasn’t a day to do much, I did a couple of hours of essential work after breakfast, came back and watched
Country File
, slept in the chair for an hour, fought off thousands of Zulus on the television and set off around the stock while afternoon milking was in progress. It
I was concerned about who had been about. The keeper usually travels about on his quad bike and has a four-wheel drive vehicle as well, but a quick call on the mobile soon determined that it wasn’t him.
The hares didn’t behave as if someone has been ‘having a go’, you can soon tell, but someone could have been checking to see how many were about. A few years ago a gang used to go up on the top, hare coursing, perhaps they’d been back to have another look. At the moment the keeper shoots about three or four a year strictly for the landlord who will talk eloquently about the delights of jugged hare.
I’M NEVER quite sure of the right word; the word I’m looking for is litigious. I’m trying to find a word that best described the society we find ourselves in. It describes what some people call ambulance chasers, the people who appear on adverts on our television with: ‘Have you had an accident at work?’
Of course I have, who hasn’t, it’s a part of life. When my sonbroke his ankle ice-skating last winter there were two ‘suits’ there getting him to sign disclaimers before the ambulance arrived, and who can blame them? This blame culture has manifested itself in a new way, one that will affect the countryside.
Apparently there are vigilant council employees out there, scrutinising roadside trees. The story goes like this; your council employee spots a tree with a couple of dead branches, it could be a large dead branch which could be dangerous and in need of removal, or it could be a tiny bit of dead branch, about a foot or so long.
A letter is sent to the owner of the tree, questioning the safety of the whole tree and giving the owner 28 days to do something about it, putting the responsibility for any future accidents firmly onto the owner.
The owner of the tree usually takes advice from a tree expert along the lines of ‘Is this tree safe for ever?’ Well no-one in his right mind is going to say ‘yes’ to that. Around here there are 26 healthy oak trees marked up for felling with red crosses on them. There is an established paper trail of passing the buck that ultimately ends with the tree being cut down. If a farmer were to fell 20 trees somewhere it would probably lead to an outcry. But for Health and Safety, it’s apparently OK. No-one wants to see anyone injured by a falling tree, or bough, especially me, but this is all a bit over the top. Where’s the commonsense, where’s the balance?
The past weeks have seen us out and about on our land on a daily basis, as the seasons and the work progresses. After all these years, I still find the views from our top fields remarkable and remind myself on a daily basis how lucky I am to live and work in such an environment. I took some sandwiches and a drink up to our young tractor driver the other day and took the opportunity to take it all in, while I waited for the tractor to go around the fieldand come back to the gateway. When he got off the tractor I told him that we’d got it all wrong, I suggested that it was ridiculous that I was paying him to drive up and down this particular field on such a lovely sunny day, with panoramic views that some people would envy. I went on, quite eloquently, to suggest that it would be much fairer if he paid me for the privilege of doing what he was in such surroundings. He took a sip of tea, thought about it a bit, and said he would rather leave things as they were.
LAST SUNDAY was the Bank Holiday weekend. You probably want to forget it. It didn’t stop raining here all day, it wasn’t a day to do much, I did a couple of hours of essential work after breakfast, came back and watched
Country File
, slept in the chair for an hour, fought off thousands of Zulus on the television and set off around the stock while afternoon milking was in progress. It
Similar Books
