“I have signed up to the Tree Registry (£18 a year), a database of some 80,000 “champion” trees in Britain and Ireland. Individual entries are highly detailed: genus, species, height, diameter and girth, length of extra stems, recorder’s name, grid reference, owner’s name and address and year planted, when known. Sometimes there are photos. The searches are quite slow and the catch in my part of the world is that I will never be able to see most of the local champions since they are on private land, but Farringdon parish church in Hampshire is not too far from HART Wildlife Rescue and is home to two Yews, one of them, described as a “huge, hollow shell”, recorded by no less than Gilbert White in 1781 and W.H. Hudson in 1902, which it has been suggested may be 3,500 years old. I look forward to visiting them.”
That’s from an earlier post, Even more fungi, the Tree Register and a not so welcome presence in my hair – Animal Wild. I did indeed visit the Farringdon Yews: Rewild the Church (and I Love Yew) – Animal Wild.
In the post yesterday came, unexpectedly, the Tree Register Yearbook 2024-2025. Hmm. I seem to be in censorious mood this morning but it is a very strange affair. Whilst I of course applaud the work of the Register, this has a whiff of old-school colonialism about it. Trustee Maurice Foster VMH (Victoria Medal of Honour, an award given to horticulturalists) writes the foreword which includes: “Today we are not exposed to the danger of being murdered along the Chinese border by aggressive tribes with a serious aversion to foreigners …” Then a peculiar anecdote presented on the page in a separate box about sharing a small room with two individuals, who are not introduced or mentioned anywhere else in the piece, “in some infinitely distant part of Yunnan”. There was debate about whether to leave the door closed to keep rats out or open to let those already in out. “The issue was unresolved by fitful sleep, until Patrick began to snore … Empty Coke cans on a shelf trembled and vibrated as the very air shook. The rat issue was resolved. Not only did ours scuffle away in fear, those outside disappeared into the far reaches of the building.” Very odd.
More interestingly taxonomic changes are not confined to the animal kingdom of course and there’s a list of trees recently moved into different or entirely new genera. “Nearly all of the trees that used to be in Schefflera move to Heptapleurum.” for example. We are told “Don’t worry if you can’t remember all of this; I can’t either.”
In an article about Leylandii, we read that they have “evolved” – “but I don’t mean that in an evolutionary way.” Perhaps find another word?
‘Champion Trees. What is so significant about a Champion tree?’ doesn’t seem to answer the question in any way, shape or form, whilst a paragraph elsewhere is headed “Miss-labelled”. There is no hint of a pun or other attempt at humour in what follows.
The most egregious error, unless I am completely missing something, is the title ‘Around the Countries’. Ireland is included but otherwise this deals with the subject at hand on a county by county basis.
I always enjoy our local paper, Newbury Weekly News. Front page news is the case against Thames Water who have pleaded guilty to illegal discharges of raw sewage into West Berkshire waterways and adjoining land. Sentencing is due today. The maximum penalty for each of two offences is twelve months imprisonment or an unlimited fine. The CEO, Chris Weston, has already trousered his bonus though, £195,000 after just three months in the job whilst other bonuses were taken from what was meant to be an emergency cash fund.
According to Wikipedia Weston “will be paid an annual salary of £850,000 and a performance-related bonus of up to 156 per cent, taking his total package to about £2.25 million.” He was previously a senior figure at the appalling British Gas.
Also in the paper is a report on a harmless and rather wonderfully old-fashioned ploughing competition. I don’t doubt that there is a good deal of skill in ploughing the land, but unless, again, I am missing something, the event seems to be about who can best drive in a straight line.
West Berkshire Council in an alleged effort to improve recycling, especially of food waste, seems to be more concerned about cutting costs. Black bins will now only be collected every three weeks. It’s common knowledge that a lot of our supposedly recycled waste is shipped abroad to cause terrible problems there and so there is not much public trust in the process. The Council has published guidelines to reduce maggots including the suggestion that nappies and hygiene products should be double-bagged. In plastic presumably. Used batteries will now be collected if left on top of a black bin as long as they are in a clear bag, plastic again. As the writer to a letter to the paper points out, why give us Christmas collection dates at all if they are going to be changed? He adds that other website advice on the website is very patronising. He’s not wrong. They even tell us to plan our meals and to consider combining old clothes “in new ways”.
There’s also been a bit of a debate on the letters pages about arrests made after a loud, all-night, illegal party, which prompted complaints from nearby residents. It seems so mean-spirited to wish to prevent young people from enjoying themselves. It’s only one night. I hope the miseries don’t go on holiday to Jamaica, where there’s joyful music all the time, everywhere. They wouldn’t like it.
One more from the NWN. The laudable Wetland Reserve Project in Hungerford to restore habitat needs money. But the charity has announced that the project’s patron is Lord Benyon, that maestro of conflicting interests (passim). This will surely deter more potential supporters than it will benefit the undertaking. See here for George Monbiot on Benyon: The Estate We’re In – George Monbiot.
I have largely studiously avoided mentioning the T word in this blog, but seeing the royal family fawning over the ecocidal Trump is a truly disgusting spectacle. I loved that footage of Trump and Epstein together were projected onto one of the towers at Windsor Castle. His last visit cost the taxpayer £3.9 million on security alone. This time he’s been given a royal carriage procession and a state banquet, and for the first time for a state visit a flypast by the Red Arrows. None of those are cheap. Everyone involved is irredeemably tarnished. The reek of Epstein is not going away. Starmer is pretending that he appointed thrice-disgraced Mandelson who seems incapable of not being drawn towards filthy lucre like a moth to a flame, without knowing what he knows now. Which is just that the Mandelson Epstein friendship went further and deeper than he realised. But that’s just a matter of degree. He knew perfectly well about the association. Despised by pretty much everyone, having delivered precisely nothing and broken so many manifesto promises, the country will be glad to see the back of him as is surely now inevitable. I managed this paragraph without even mentioning prince Andrew. Oh.
One very small instance of something which disproportionately restored a little of what is left of my faith in human nature was in Halford’s yesterday, where I took my electric bike in to get the brakes checked and adjusted. The very personable and thorough expert spent at least ten minutes checking and adjusting. I asked how much I owed. I would have consider anything between say £10 and £30 perfectly reasonable. “Nothing at all sir.” How very decent.
Finally for light relief, one can always rely on badly translated and/or just plain ridiculous user manuals. A small set of LED string lights comes with the warning that they are not “a Toy, please keep away from children”, the assurance that they are under guarantee which excludes “the artificial situation of damaged or overload working” and, in case users thought it would be a good idea: “Please don’t cut the string light, this will break the circuit, that will not working.”
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