h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An entertaining morning was had by all in our household - bar my little sister who slept through it all.

I was woken up by the sound of chain saws.

Over the past few weeks the path down beside our house - known locally as Coffin Way - has been being widened and surfaced in order to allow the kids coming back and forward from the new school to walk back safely on proper pavements. Fair enough. So, they've been digging up things, trimming back trees and making a ruck-us all summer.

Today, as I said, I was woken up by chainsaws, being wielded by men who were cutting back three of our trees a good 6 foot up their trunks (they've also taken out all the elderflower, so next years cordial will be lacking). So I phoned my parents, seeing they had been promised this wouldn't happen and I didn't know what to do, who turned back from their trip out, gone from the house no more than 20 minutes, and told me to go out (in my pyjamas) to see what was going on.

To the guys credit, he was very nice, he wasn't aggressive or unpleasant, in fact he was apologetic and explained what was going on. He said that he was a subcontractor and that he had been told to do this by the council - who as I said had promised the trees, which are all in our garden's boundary wouldn't be touched. When I told him about where the official boundary is he was apologetic because the council hadn't told him that. The official boundary I should add is another metre or two outwith our garden, when the houses were built the builders couldn't be bothered trying to secure wire fences on the slope so just plonked it where the ground dropped away. So there is a stone marker to show this...we know this because a few years after we moved here, the council refused to remove the elms which had dutch elm disease because they were in our property, so us and our neighbours at the time paid for them to be taken down.

Anyway, the parents came home, dad talked to the guys, mum and I talked to a few of the neighbours on the other side, who are also not happy because their gardens are now going to flood because of the path and undergrowth being cut back - it used to be quite swampy over there and the ground at the path and foliage helped to suck up the water. Dad has also talked to the man at the council he'd spoken to before and complained. And someone official seems to have already been down there.

But it's done, and the garden/house is now exposed to anyone walking along the path, and the next stage is cutting into the embankment by 1 metre which will then probably make said shallow rooting conifers so unstable that they'll need to be taken down or they'll smash into the very nice neighbour across the ways fence and shed the next time we have a high wind.

This neighbour also said that they've been having problems with teenagers gathering and drinking behind their fence and have noticed the increased traffic of kids on bikes, skateboards, mopeds etc belting up and down the new path since it's laying and there is also some 40 yr old moron who drives a petrol fuelled toy car up an down there at 30 miles an hour on a regular basis which not only makes a hideous noise, but is dangerous.

In some respects, we've all had a very British reaction to it and it's nice to see that the other neighbours are also unhappy.

Anyway, rant about the lying local council, the workers have gone and it's started to rain heavily, so now we just have to pray that those trees don't come crashing down - one did a year ago, luckily missing the neighbours fence. A blackbird was not so lucky.