Unfortunately my phone was indoors - I didn't manage to capture the moment, so I have just added a general image of our garden in France, and not even a particularly recent one. But at least our dog Rosie is in it!
To backtrack: this summer we have had a lot of trouble with our internet and landline in France, with at one time a 10-day blackout, involving a lot of phone calls and numerous visits from telecoms engineers. Finally we were told that the problem was our trees rubbing on the cable, especially in high winds. We were sceptical, but some of the trees needed cutting back anyway, so we set to. Normally we would keep tree-trimming for the winter when the leaves wouldn't result in an enormous amount of stuff to be disposed of, but we felt we had little choice. It involved a platform about 5 feet from the ground (not very level at that) and a heavy extending chainsaw, then endless chopping up and visits to the town dump.
Still the internet remained dead.
Very reluctantly we started cutting back some small oaks which a few years ago I rescued from rampant brambles. A pile of branches, twigs and leaves began to mount up, and we were only a few days away from returning to the UK; it was going to be a long haul and very tedious getting it all cut up and taken away. Then our neighbour (French) came by on her electric bike. She saw the vast heap and us wearily wielding secateurs and took pity on us. She phoned her husband and some while later he turned up with his tractor, on the front of which was a huge toothed grab. We manhandled the branches into its maw and he trundled away to a pit on his farm where they burn their own twiggery and unwanted garden debris. Saved!
This is by no means the first time that these lovely people have helped us out of a hole.
Incidentally, at one point a sizeable oak log got stuck on the phone cable and swung around for a while, making the cable itself sag and bow. That evening, as if by magic, the internet returned. So I think our trees were definitely not the culprits. In fact, as I chatted with our neighbour while waiting for the tractor, it transpired that the whole area had been cut off for about 24 hours owing to someone inadvertently chopping through an underground cable.
Our oaks have been reprieved from the menacing attentions of the chainsaw!
