A Hole in the Head-ge

There comes a time in every single girl's life when she longs for a man. Not a soul mate or Love of Her Life, but just a man with two arms and two legs and a box full of tools. The last time I felt this pang of need was when I finally reclaimed ownership of my Tivo and the task of wiring it up didn't appeal to me. No one magically appeared and I managed on my own. *sniff*

As summer has progressed my need has grown once more, but this time for a man with two arms, two legs, a step ladder and a hedge trimmer.

The house that I live in is dominated by a hedge. This isn't just any ordinary hedge. This is a super-beefed-up-don't-mess-with-me hedge. It grows so thick and so fast that my living room was losing daylight - seemingly on an hourly rate. And I have tangled with this hedge before and know from experience that blunt shears are no match for it.

So I sent a call out to the Universe: "UNIVERSE!! YOO HOOO!!! HEY! SEND ME SOME HEDGE TRIMMERS WOULD YOU? PREFERABLY BEFORE THE FRONT DOOR IS COMPLETELY BLOCKED. OH, AND ATTACH A MAN TO THAT, IF IT'S NO BOTHER."

There was no reply. None of my friends (male or otherwise) have hedge trimmers. But the living room wasn't getting any lighter, and so, without much choice, I decided to tackle it this morning.

Now, the thing is, this hedge grows so quickly and is 5 foot thick - 2 foot of that is over the window, so I decided to cut it right back to the wood, past the window. Oh, and did I mention that the hedge is 8 foot long and 7 foot high too?

Anyhow, after hacking away for half an hour, half filling the brown wheelie bin and barely making a dent on the hedge, I made the following decision: let's not do all of it in one go.

And so here are the results. It was impossible (with the direction of the sun) to get a picture resembling the enormity of the task (yes, yes, I know, I'm a wimp) and so I took a couple of photos leaning precariously out from my bedroom window.

At the bottom of the first picture you can just see the recently revealed side of the window, blinking in the sunlight.

The second photo merely gives an indication of the size of the hedge, unintentionally capturing

the front of a car to demonstrate that this is a Truly Enormous Hedge.

So I'm done. Or should that be done in.

So if everything is a message, what were my lessons today? I have summarised my findings.

1. Privet hedge branches are very sharp. This is a lesson that I learned the last time I attacked it with a pair of shears, but foolishly forgot.
2. You can fit 42 square foot of privet hedge in to a single brown wheelie bin, plus trimmings.
3. Big privet hedges don't mind when you lean across them to trim the top.
4. Leaning across the top of a big privet hedge really scratches your arms.
5. When cutting back a privet hedge, wear long sleeves - no matter how sunny or hot it is.
6. Leaning 3ft across the top of a 5ft wide shared privet hedge to cut the bits that your neighbour didn't reach does not evoke feelings of unconditional love towards said neighbour. Especially given the volume of guilt that the same neighbour evoked when they cut 'their side' of the privet hedge 2 weeks ago.
7. Neither do feelings of unconditional love spring forth when, after snipping the last twig and cramming the last branch in the full wheelie bin exposing arms akin to a victim of self-harm, the neighbour over the road starts trimming their hedge.... with a set of electric hedge trimmers.
8. Getting angry with a privet hedge does more harm than good.
9. Shouting at a privet hedge has no effect at all.
10. The cup of tea drunk after clipping a privet hedge is possibly the best tasting cup of tea in the whole world.

The good news is that when I went outside to sweep up the last of the leaves, the neighbour over the road said that I could borrow their hedge trimmer any time I like.

Looks like my prayers were answered after all. Right, now where is the Savlon?