Gardening DIY – hedge demolition- in response to Telegraph gardening article advising people to be lazy.

How we (I at 76 yrs) removed a 13ft hedge (after being quoted £400 to trim the top and sides!) and roots, dug out an area of soil and rubble filing 90 rubble bags (1/3 full each) to enlarge our seating area, moved fencing back and laid paving (help with the fencing only).

Tools – a long handled pruning saw, spit, log-spitting axe and large hoe.

Starting with the garden when we moved in.  Professionals cut down the tree and removed the huge ivy on a derelict garage end on other side of boundary encroaching on our garage. But even they – using a grubbing out machine – only grubbed out to just below the surface – I had to use a spit, log-splitting axe, saw and hoe to dig out and remove all the roots from the holly tree - massive roots all left in by the professionals!

[NB. Clue – Click once on picture to see whole pic. click again to return to the story!]

 

When we bought in 2021 – wild and semi-derelict garden – and you haven”t see the huge hedge yet!

Stage one – trees removed – initial seating area – huge hedge

Stage two – trellis (professionally) installed - huge hedge 

 

 Initial garden plan

 

Seating area swamped by huge hedge (with Rosie).

 Stage Three – extend trellis fencing to hold back huge hedge – FAIL.

Stage Four – chop down huge hedge (winter) with pruning saw.

 

Looks OK from the outside – but stumps and roots and higher ground block extending the seating area.

 

Stage Five – stumps and roots out (Spit, log-splitting axe) clear for digging higher level soil out.

 

Plan for extending seating area / moving and expanding trellis fencing.

Stage Six – new trellis installed – just soil removal to go before laying new paving.

 

Stage Seven – Amazing how many rubble sacks (1/3 full) it takes to dig out this area to below paving level – it’s dammed thirsty work – even in winter!

 Stage Eight – All paved and worth the sweat in the end – with up-cycled (painted black) old garden seats found in a back alley. But what to do with that extra paving (a pallet easier to buy than a few pavers)

Stage Nine – Why not enlarge northern sunny side seating too?

 The end – views of a small garden – was it worth it? Up-cycled jardinieres (another back-alley find).

 

And the House from the garden *after all windows/doors painted ‘Castle Grey’ F&B. (and Rosie again)

 

 

CURD THE LION STORYBOARD

 

Random thoughtsa on housing, construction, transport, employment, etc..

On construction goals, logistics transport and office commuting.

Rather than critique the fumbling of politicians, I venture to suggest that answers to all these lie in much deeper forward planning.

One thing that may emerge from the mess we are currently in is the realisation of several strategic shifts that I (among others) have been advocating for decades (shouting into the hollows of my mind of course because not one listens, everyone speaks).

I suggest, forget adding one’s voice to the professed moral indignation of the virtuous and turn instead to trying to visualise what might be done in the much longer term than the crisis of confidence that has erupted with COVID-19, which, in strategic terms, through its sudden disruptive power, may be the stimulus that changes the mindset.

In random order: - 
The devolution of work (that proportion of the economy that is information based) from city hubs to local micro-hubs (or home based work).
The replacement of many tasks (and occupations) by AI.

Think Apple. This is an analogous tale,
In the early days business IT philosophy was based upon central processing (big computer in the control of IT experts) and dumb terminals (Atex for instance) to keep workers ‘in-house’ where their performance and behaviour could be most easily monitored. Apple computers are ‘intelligent’ thus able to function irrespective of the core IT setup being viable.
At the Telegraph I demanded that my graphics unit was Mac based (IT tried to argue but failed). When the central system broke down as it frequently did, we were the only section able to continue working.
The ‘federal’ system of business (Apple) had no need of centralisation because each terminal (worker) works independently and communicates with fellows and central systems when the need arises (this is becoming increasingly a norm for publishing where the content providers work remotely and only production workers (editors etc work in-house). It is a hybrid of old and new.

Communication has long ago reached the point when those latter are not needed to work in-house most of the time if at all. In-house workers waste massive amounts of time in meetings, formal and informal But bosses are happy because they can see them.
They also waste massive amounts of time ‘commuting’ to their hives.

It is this perceived need for oversight that drives the whole city centre tower block worker ant syndrome.
Bosses cannot get their heads around the concept that people cannot be persuaded to work unless they are physically under the thumb of their overseers. 

The ‘shared office’ concept, now increasing for freelance workers is one that every information based company could tie into. 
Workers (those who cannot work from home due to space / interference) commute only locally to their shared micro hubs (with secure links to head office  and parallel micro hubs.

City centre commuting - end of.
Long car journeys and traffic jams - vast reduction in.
Vehicle pollution - smashed.
Train journeys - minimised.
No need for better faster trains. ie. HS2 - end of.
STOP THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL TRAVEL.
Time wasted in both - end of.

City centre tower blocks - end of (many will have their footing underwater anyway soon if sea levels rise as predicted. Meanwhile award winning architects keep building ever more elaborate and fantastical edifices without a thought of how they will be serviced when the land upon which they sit is inundated.

Instead all that cash can be injected into local infrastructure enabling a cross section of companies to work in micro-hubs securely and for workers to be enabled to work from home (through secure personal hubs with audio visual communication with their colleagues and bosses - hi-tech garden sheds for instance.
All paid for by the companies out of the savings they make from NOT having to rent or buy office blocks in city centres or subsidising their workers commuting costs through grants loans or higher wages.

The Northern Powerhouse concept to be spuriously enabled by fast train links so that bosses can whizz back to London will instead come about naturally (as will the Welsh Powerhouse, the Cornish Powerhouse, the Everywhere Else Powerhouse) by virtue of installing the most advanced internet technology (paid for by the savings on HS2).

Pollution levels will plummet as ‘essential travel’ becomes mental (ultimately by augmented reality communications).
Cars will become ‘unessential’ - and electrified - before being replaced by technologies that are just now in their infancy.
Necessary long distance journeys will be essentially the transportation of goods by electrified lorry, an enhanced railways goods network, vacuum tube pods linking distribution hubs (not necessarily in cities).
The now mainly redundant city business centres can be re-peopled as living zones of a much higher quality (because created for the more wealthy middle classes) accommodation. This assuming that all the measures above have not slowed the advent of sea-level rise inundation of the world’s major metropolises (some large percentage of which lie in flood prone plains).

Revolutionary housing construction methods will have taken into consideration the changing needs of society and be constructed in such a fashion as to NOT ‘despoil the soil’ upon which they sit. They will be as easily removed as constructed - ‘by design’ by unskilled workers or their own future inhabitants - with no concrete foundations, elevated to remove flood vulnerability while ate same time allowing that area of land that would have been removed from the water-absorption equation by concretisation to perform its natural function.

Building regulations that are frozen in concept the methods not much improved since Roman times, will have to be overturned to accommodate such methods.

It may well be that the Tarmac-ing of Britain may have become to some extent unnecessary by this time as transport modes evolve beyond the rubber -tyre phase (and rubber is under threat worldwide from disease just as bananas are - Continental are exploring ways to commercial produce rubber from the only other source - Dandelion sap!

In a moment of reflection, I wrote this ‘philosophical’ piece.

 

I cannot, in all conscience, believe in any higher being, causal principle or end purpose, teleology if you will.

No guiding principle shaping the world or its beings, no redemption from sin or misdeeds.

The concept of love, caring, extends as a human concept from the fundamental groupings of mate and family that, with society’s increasing complexity, was extended to include interdependent groups, then tribes, then cultures, then nations, then groups of nations adhering to common codified mores, those having arisen in the ‘spiritual’ sphere (if one may call it that) from the shaman, through cults, to priest and religions, in parallel to, in the physical sphere, head of family, chief, law-giver, ruler, king (where the ruling concept is still quasi-religious) to national leaders (increasingly divorced from their god-given rights to secular ascendancy, through force of arms, then wealth) as presidents, prime ministers, dictators, oligarchs, and supra-national business heads, etc..

The corollary of inclusion, as I described before, was exclusion by dint of curse, excommunication, imprisonment, torture and death, either individual or, en masse, as conquest followed by coerced inclusion or its threatened opposite, or annihilation, pogrom, genocide, usually in the name of a God, but, secularly speaking, for the purity of the (chosen) race.

In the face of the undeniably ‘evil demi-urge’ deeply ingrained in man to remove all threat to one’s (group) survival,  it is the challenge of every man to overcome that base instinct to conquer, subjugate or destroy, and sublimate those powerful negative desires into their opposite, first respecting (the right of others to live), then caring and ultimately loving that ‘Other’, stranger, foreigner, infidel...

Exclusion, or the ‘selfish’ principle derives from the need to ensure survival of the family unit and one’s personal ‘future’ in the shape of one’s offspring. It is the desire for ‘eternity’ through this. Extended to societies it is manifest in architecture, music, song and poetry defining a culture that its adherents hope ‘to God’ will survive their transient mortality.

There will never become a time when man will become ‘good’ - his inalienable fate is to struggle for the good in the certain knowledge that his struggle will at times, in personal life and through history, prove futile in the endless cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, races, and even species, including humans.

It is that determination to work and even self-sacrifice for the benefit of his fellows and humanity that defines courage and fortitude, though a strong caveat comes in the form of ‘certitude’ that ‘right’, as he sees it, must be ‘absolute’.

When his definition of ‘right’, and ‘good’ proves not be the ‘righteous’ from another man’s point of view, how does the virtuous man conduct himself in the face of denial?

Does he seek to persuade, proselytize, impose? If so,the endless cycle begins again, from virtuous intent to evil deed.

SUB or OVER Stacked?

 A week or so ago I somehow found myself accidentally ‘subscribed’ (sucked into) to a new ‘literary?’ blog-like medium (like X – but long-form), called ‘Sub stack’ 

– which I am coming to think should be called ‘Me-me-stack’ (listen to ME! and pay ME for the privilege of hearing my VERY IMPORTANT musings, prefaced of course with a self-deprecating “I am so grateful to you (suckers) who make this possible (for me to make money advising you).

The peculiar thing is that, unwittingly, I have given my email address away to this blog site so that I now am inundated daily with the opportunity to read daily opinion columns or diaries pontificating on an ever-increasing rage of subjects coupled with requests to dive deeper (into my wallet) to benefit from the treasure trove hidden therein 

and join communities of like-minded ‘seekers’ who may even gain the privilege of communicating with the said Guru on occasion or participate in ‘events’ that will leave me assuredly more wise, knowledgeable and impecunious.\

 

But with so many Gurus, so many invitations – and so little time – I am at a loss as to which to choose? 

Is there a Sub-stack blog on that?

Agents, dontcha luvvy-luvem?

 Watching ‘Job Lot’ – a series about life at a British Job Centre – when the thought suddenly occurred to me that approaching agents is a bit like that – but without the humour.

So, to lighten my mood, my pea brain came up with this Limericked look at the imagined process.

There once was an agent, call her ‘Kirsty’,
Whose ‘site’ was for new talent ever thirsty,
When an old geezer applied,
She hastily replied,
 Oh Dear, but my lists are all full to burst-y.

When he stubbornly fetched to query her ‘pitch’,
She said, in a bid to be rid of the wretch,
My lists are replete,
So let me repeat,
I’ve no room for old farts: Life’s a bitch!

(Ain’t that not the Truth?)

Naturally, there is no reality I could arrange

To correspond to such a  ridiculous exchange.

 

The sign reads: ‘The Sorry Lot of the Unpublished Writer.’ 

If you can’t read it, it is because it is un-published, stupid!

WOK HAPPY

 When he looked up at me on heat 9 (max) I knew I had to capture the moment before the onions made him cry!