Grumpy Old Men Songs #24: Get Your Hedge Cut II

To be fair, that photo makes it look worse than it was. 

You could still get a pushchair on there without scraping your arms. 

You may recall the poison pen letter we received from one of our friendly neighbours just before Christmas, asking us to cut our hedge and stop dragging the neighbourhood down.

Half Man Half Biscuit – Every Time A Bell Rings

The hedge in question is a Leylandi, and being that it’s much taller than I am, we have to get a man in to cut it. I hesitate to call him “our gardener”, though he did also put us a new patio down last year, so l’ll refer to him as such for the purpose of this post.  Anyway, he’s a very busy guy (he has something to do with the Chelsea Flower Show and does the gardens for the Third Earl of Somewhere), so we’re pretty low on his list of priorities. We have, however, had him booked to come sort the hedge out for some time. Last Tuesday was the date in the diary. We were very excited – after all, we’ve gone 6 months without any hate mail, and we knew it couldn’t last…

On the weekend before the gardener was due, we received a letter from the council. Rather than send us anymore anonymous billet doux, it turns out that our local GOG (grumpy old git) had instead reported us to “The Trees Team”. Presumably The A Team were busy, otherwise we might have had B.A. Baracus knocking on our door. “Get those trees cut down, sucker!”

There followed a lot of back and forth between Louise and the council and a couple of sleepless nights. To be fair, the Trees Team lady was very nice, happy that we already had a man booked and were taking care of it ourselves, but as an official complaint had gone in, they had to insist on us following the letter of the law rather than just “do as much as you can”. The gardener, meanwhile, refused to cut it back too much in case it killed the bushes and “damaged his reputation”… not to mention that there are birds nesting inside it, which opens up a whole other can of worms.

Fortunately, the council were happy with the work we’ve had done and signed off the job, meaning there can be no further comeback from Mr. Grumpy. Meanwhile, our Number One Suspect was conveniently away on holiday that week (in his caravan… just saying), though he’s back now. And much as I want to put a brick through his window or smear Bertie’s dog poo all over his front door, I’m going to be the better man and let it go. Though all this could have been settled far more amicably if he’s just had the guts to come give us a knock...