Rathbone's Ramblin'

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[rathbone]

[Dadaist]

[Novastar]

EXGXYAGVXRTUDJQ?

(AAA as start point - you didn't mention yours)

[ali]

FFS!!!

[Dadaist]

[Novastar]

[Maria]

[Dadaist]

[Dadaist]

[Novastar]

[Dadaist]

[Novastar]

[Novastar]

I've been eating a Ceaser Salad and have a funny feeling in my Tunny.

(Going off the original subject a bit here).

[Dadaist]

[rathbone]

[Novastar]

[Dadaist]

[Novastar]

[Dadaist]

[rathbone]

I worry about Harry. I suppose most of us here worry about Harry.

I was mowing the lawn earlier this week when he came wandering up, asking for Mrs. R. He looked a bit bemused when I said she was still at school. I suppose he thought that because he had finished for the day, the teaching staff would have as well. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted to talk to Mrs. R. about. That was between him and her.

He was intrigued by the fact that I was using the old manual mower and asked why I didn’t have an electric one. I explained that there were two reasons: this was the first cut of the year and I find that it’s easier to do a ‘high’ cut with the old mower and secondly, the roots of the cherry tree push up through the grass and the blades on the electric mower strip off the bark, which isn’t good for the tree.

He told me that his dad lets him use the electric mower at their house and he asked if he could have a go at our one. His hands just about made the handle of the mower if he stood on tip-toe and he couldn’t get it to move. I stood behind him and helped him to push. We went down to one end of the lawn and then back to the other. He thought that was great and he thought emptying the clippings into the composter was great as well. His dad doesn’t have a composter.

Harry sat on our step and watched me cut the rest of the grass and then he ate the digestive biscuit with red leicester cheese on it that I’d made for myself and hadn’t eaten. When the paper boy delivered the local paper he looked at the front cover photograph and said that he knew the man. It was a photograph of our local P.C..

If he had opened the paper to page eight he would have seen the name and shame column. This has been a feature of our local rag for the last year or so. According to national statistics this area has the second lowest crime figures in England and Wales, and yet the local paper still manages to fill up a third of its content with dreadful crime. (the other two thirds are split between the activities of the Women’s Institute and local sport.)

The name and shame column does just that. Anyone who has been up before the magistrates is identified, complete with address and sometimes photograph, and their misdemeanours outlined in graphic detail. Not much this week, only 68 poor unfortunates, 49 of whom were up for driving offences, mostly having no tax disc. Most of the rest were people watching t.v. without a licence, or fishing without a permit or riding the train without a ticket. There was one burglary.

In a small community like ours, this service is a godsend. It allows people like Mrs. R. to know what her former pupils are now getting up to and the rest of us know precisely who skips over the station car park fence to avoid the ticket barrier, who the person is fishing under the bridge, and whose clapped out old banger hasn’t passed its M.O.T.

It also means that we know who is repeatedly up in front of the beak for dealing and using class A drugs. That’s usually Harry’s mum. And who gets done regularly for drunk and disorderly, criminal damage and assault. That’s usually Harry’s dad.

So we worry about Harry.

[Epykat]

So was it Harry's bruvver wot done the burglary? We need a name and shame in our paper too but then it wouldn't be called a weekly paper it would be called a weekly book. And anyway, most of them don't have any shame so it wouldn't make any difference.

[gilo]

[gilo]

[rathbone]

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[Dadaist]

Here's my wee bit beech hedge, R :



I cut mine just the other week too.

You can also see the bit of turf I put down where a rose bed used to be it's doing very well since this photo was taken.

[Epykat]

[Dadaist]

[Cleopas]

[Epykat]

[arachnid]

[ali]

[Cleopas]