Last week I generously volunteered the Systems Administrator to cut a friend's hedge. She was being hassled by the council, because it had grown out over the pavement. It was really not encroaching very much, no more than lots of other hedges and shrubs in Wivenhoe, and I agreed with her that the council were being unreasonable in imposing such a tight deadline for her to reduce it. She doesn't even like the hedge, and wants to have it removed, along with some conifers, to create more light and space in her garden and reduce the root competition for her vegetables, but the council said it couldn't wait until then. Neither she nor her partner are very happy using large power tools outside, and their local jobbing gardener had quoted a hundred quid for the job. I said that was ridiculous, and that the SA could do it for them.
She was embarrassed in case I thought she'd been angling for the offer, which I didn't. I just thought there was no point in her paying that much money for a job that would take the SA no more than a couple of hours, and probably significantly less, given that we have a hedge trimmer and a chainsaw. It's not as though the hedge even needed to be faced up beautifully into a level surface, when it's destined for the chop anyway.
The main reason why the hedge is still there is that they need planning permission to remove it and install a fence in its place. I found that even more preposterous than the idea of paying a hundred pounds to have the wretched thing cut. I thought that putting up a normal domestic garden fence, in a road that is not in a conservation area, where none of the houses are listed buildings or anything like that, would be the sort of thing you could do under presumed consent, but no, you need planning permission. I could see that if somebody took up breeding budgerigars and wanted to cover their entire garden with a shanty town of aviaries built out of assorted recycled materials, or proposed to construct a quarter scale replica of the Mittal tower, from the heights of which they could leer down into their neighbours' gardens, then they ought to have to obtain planning permission first, but putting up a six foot designed for the purpose larchlap garden fence, like you can buy in B&Q?
It is described by Colchester Borough Council as 'The carrying out of operations within the curtilage of an existing dwellinghouse, for the purpose ancillary to the enjoyment of the dwellinghouse as such, or the erection or construction of gates, fences, walls, or other means of enclosure along the boundary of the curtilage of an existing dwellinghouse' and it will set you back one hundred and seventy two pounds. Bonkers. I suppose the trouble is that since council funding is under pressure, they are raking in fees where they can get them, from parking fines and planning. Of course Colchester Borough Council could manage its finances more sensibly, for example by not wasting money on half-cocked schemes to semi-pedestrianise the High Street.
This morning was hedge cutting day, the weather being fine, and it didn't take very long. Our friends helped rake up the bits. I didn't go, because I was meeting another friend for coffee. We originally met through beekeeping, but have since bonded through a joint enthusiasm for wildlife, well-made craft objects, pets, and the discovery that we shared a similar degree of mildy bolshy libertarianism. I hadn't seen her since April, and we spent a happy morning at the Beth Chatto gardens, exchanging news of our bees, her bloodthirsty cat, currently wearing a bucket on its head since its latest battle with some other creature larger and more heavily armed than itself, and the antics of her children. Her daughter has taken up taxidermy, and she currently has a stock of dead rabbits, a baby woodpecker and a stoat in her deep freezer, though the daughter has been told she can't have more than one drawer to store her future subjects. She has a fox somewhere, but that is in somebody else's freezer, though my friend had to restrain herself the other day from salvaging a muntjac that had been hit by a car. Taxidermy is becoming rather popular (I suppose that is why David Sedaris has been regaling the R4 audience with the story of how he bought a stuffed owl for his boyfriend's Valentines Day present) and my friend's daughter was offered ninety pounds for a stuffed mole playing a miniature harmonica.
A narrative is shaped by what is left out as much as what is included. I didn't go and help with the hedge cutting, because I was meeting another friend for coffee. I hadn't seen her since April, because she has been otherwise occupied while her husband undergoes treatment for cancer. He's already had one bout a few years ago, treated with a bone marrow transplant, but relapsed over last winter. This is his second round of chemo. Sessions are every four weeks, and he feels sick virtually all the time. He has one more to go, and soon they will go for the post-treatment scan, and discover how much the cancer has retreated. With any luck, it will have reduced quite a lot, and they will have a few more years of something approaching normal life before the next relapse. At some point I suppose chemo will no longer do any good, or he will be too weakened to tolerate another course.
We didn't spend much time talking about his illness. She has lived with that practically constantly since the diagnosis in February, and been worried about the possibility of relapse since he started getting rather tired again last autumn. I took my cue from my friend, and this morning's outing was a short respite for her from being the carer for a cancer sufferer. Or at least, I hope it was, and that she didn't go home fuming that I hadn't shown the appropriate degree of curiosity and sympathy. It's difficult to know what one is supposed to do, but being too shy to see someone because you don't know what to say must be the worst.
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