suburbanforest

A year without blogging

2009-08-13T23:23:00.002+01:00

Some things we learned in the last year:

BLOGGING IS A LONELY BUSINESS: WITNESS EBORFOREST
URBAN FORESTRY DIDN'T DIE: IT WAS A FIGMENT OF ALAN SIMSON'S IMAGINATION ALL ALONG
FEW PEOPLE CARE ABOUT SOCIETY NOW: SOCIETY IS DYING ON ITS ARSE
EVEN LESS PEOPLE CARE ABOUT YORKSHIRE FORWARD: NOT EVEN YORKSHIRE FORWARD. ITS PREPOSTEROUS: WITNESS F.E.Y.
THE TORIES HAVE COME UP WITH A GOOD IDEA AT LAST: SCRAP RDAs
CUCUMBERS ARE BEAUTIFULLY TASTY IF HOME GROWN. WE RECOMMEND 'WAUTOMA'
NOT ALL OLD CARAVANS LEAK
THE WEST COAST OF IRELAND IS A LONELY PLACE FOR A MAN IN SEARCH OF A DECENT LARCH

Foresters Are Boring

2008-09-01T13:01:00.003+01:00

It has been brought to my attention that foresters are boring. Not that anyone really needed to tell us over here at suburbaneborforest, a sub-regional off-shoot of suburbanforest. We have been beavering away in one corner of the caravan for the past few months on a research project on this very topic. With a little cash from SITA, some borrowings form Yorkshire Forward Investment Banking and a merino wool scarf to keep out the worst of the draughts, we set Dr. Connie Furze to work on yet another post-post doctoral thesis. The findings will be published shortly on www.imaselfobsesseddustymegalomaniac.ac.uk/research/furze/bullshit
In idle conversation over a quick mug of Camp coffee while we were waiting for her GWizz to charge up on the Zigg, Connie finally spewed a few choice nuggets from her academic gullet.
"Foresters spend a lot of time alone with a spray can, fantasising about large machinery. This is obviously a profession which draws in those who, by dint of their first view of the naked mother in youth as a castrated male, pine for the fetish to replace the lost genitalia."
"Or they're all pompous cocks" came the voice from the chemical toilet cupboard, into which Bud was squeezed, seeing off the last of a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream as he wrestled papers from the filing cabinet therein. Still bitter at being snubbed on his seventh attempt with the ICF, his joy in shouting "Cock" for the nineteenth time that afternoon remained unalloyed.
Connie went on. " We have questionnaired 208 leading foresters in the North of England. Although seventeen replies, an 8.17 percent return, is not a statistically valid sample of the forester population, we have enough coherent data to make some scientific assumptions about the respondents' profiles. And it seems from a primary sift of the database, with corrections applied, that they're all pompous cocks."
So there you have it. From the horse's mouth. It's a fact.
Cocks.

Eborforest Silky Pruning Saw Massacre - an idea for a film

2008-07-16T15:15:00.006+01:00

When Eva Forestry (Angelina Jolie) hears that the New Earwick cemetery where her grandfather is buried has been vandalized, she gathers her wheelchair-bound brother Crispin (Martin Jarvis) and several other friends together to see if grandpa's remains are still in one piece. While in the area, Eva and her friends decide to visit grandfather's old farmhouse. Unfortunately, a family of homicidal slaughterhouse workers who take their job home with them have taken over the house next door. Included amongst the brood is Leatherarse (Justin William Timberpond), a Hayaguchi-six-metre-telescopic-pruner-wielding human horror show who wears a face mask made out of human skin, hair, Terrier Bitter and dripping. Eva's friends are rapidly exterminated one-by-one by the next-door neighbours, leaving only Eva left to fight off Leatherarse and his clan.
What do you think? I think it could work

On closer inspection...

2008-06-03T09:45:00.002+01:00

Who's watching the watchers, eh?

2008-05-30T10:54:00.005+01:00

Even in the most public of places, they just can't help themselves.
What was that about context?

Who's watching the watchers in the woods?

2008-05-30T10:37:00.003+01:00

Well? You wanted context. Here they are in a woodland near you, watching.

Who's watching the watchers?

2008-05-22T22:38:00.003+01:00

My recent sojourn in the pleasurable surroundings of the Eire penal system gave me time to reflect.
And I ask myself, and you, dear bosky reader (for you are one, literally and metaphorically), this question: Where have all these miserable, sour-faced, pulp-brained bureaucrats come from, all of a sudden?
Crawling out of the woodwork , they are, at every turn. Is anyone getting paid to deliver anything real?
Fuck 'em all.

Six months in the wilderness

2008-05-12T12:02:00.001+01:00

Anyone still there?

Do foresters dream of electric squirrels?

2008-01-02T01:35:00.000Z

Amazing what the Atlantic Wind blows in here on West Clare Coast.
I couldn't help but notice the inebriated Geordie twang emanating, nay fog-horning, from the lounge bar of O"Thornohans English Theme Pub up beyond Crappanoolans Crossing on the road to Feckshainrichie Bridge.
"Thas the best feckin' film ever made, fit like man, an' no mistaiken" opined Sir Didley Squatt (the very same) to no-one in particular as he took a greedy, Geordie gulp from his glass of The Black Stuff. For it was himself, holding on to the brass bar rail like the bemused, sodden captain refusing to leave a stricken trawler in a force eleven gale.
"And now I am havin' ti work wi' tossers like Brad feckin' Pitt, man. Moy arse if he carries off that Jesse James character wi' real conviction, like man. Donal, have yers any Pringles, man?"
As I pondered wistfully over this doleful scene unfolding before me, it was only moments until I realised I had origami'd a beer mat into a unicorn. What was happening to me? Is this all a dream? Is Wally Miapine a replicant, or one of us? Is there anyone out there?
I stumbled hours later from O'Thornohan's, with the rain lashing into my face. I pointed the dun donkey down to the black bay and slipped on a fine fawn shawl found on the foreshore. It was a poetic night, enough to stir tears to my cheeks.

Hope all is well in Blighty. Don't give up hope. I will be back soon.

There aren't nearly enough signs in the world

2007-12-31T23:30:00.001Z

suburbanforest is pleased to welcome everyone into 2008 with a timely warning. I am sure you are all glad we are here to keep you on the straight and narrow.
Hasn't the weather been mild for the time of year? We think we are in for a cold snap. Will have to get some gas in, and a few Abernethy biscuits in case of visitors.
But remember! Do no hold the wrong end of a chainsaw.

Like the first awning...

2007-12-31T12:24:00.000Z

Dear Bud
I thought I would open my suburbanforest account with an invitation for all your readers to a new field sport. Here's a picture of my uncle Leon (he's French you know, which explains the relaxed attitude to health and safety and the jaunty titfer) revelling in a bout of Recreational Directional Felling, which they've been doing in France now since around 1987.
All you need to get you started is a chainsaw, a loaded combi can, a sense of direction, and you're away.
Oh, and of course, you will need to find yourself a wood full of caravans. That's no problem! Thanks to the drop in timber prices, the retirement / shooting / redundancy of any staff who would give a shit otherwise, the nonsensical fashion for the civil servant always to laud multifunctionality and landowners' general love of loot, growing trees has often given way over the last few years to growing relationships with people who live in aluminium sheds on wheels. (For interactive site maps of your local encampment, go to www.arbdiddicoy.co.uk)
Tim Burr, Eastern Division Chairman of Recreational Directional Felling UK, the sport's governing body said in a recent interview with ForestTV: "Felling trees on caravans is a great winter sport for young and old. We have all walks of life coming here, to our training facility near Thetford. Some of our lads are off to Beiging next year, to work on dropping big stuff on statics in time for the Olympics. We have a few guys in Leeds and round there who drop stuff from trees into sheds and garages and that as part of their everyday work, so getting into RDF is just a natural progression for them. I like it when they leave the crockery in and you drop a seventy footer into 'em. It goes with a bang, I'll tell yer. "Specially if they left the gas on."
So, do you think any of your readers would like to give it a go? If we can get a party of ten together, it makes it cheaper on transport.
By the way, I really like your blog. It really is very good indeed. Has just the right amount of wit and caustic good humour, while balancing that with thought-provoking imagery and a real sense of purpose. I wish you and your team all the very best for 2008. Happy New Year.

Awning Has Broken

2007-12-22T14:42:00.000Z

An Atlantic swell skips and scuds boisterously through and over my swinging, drying string vests. I watch from the window of suburbanforest's winter holiday quarters - a 12'6" Swift Tahiti berthed precariously on the sodden Eire coastline - as laundry items flap limply on a length of blue baler twine, as grey rollers break, grey as my Damart H-Fronts, break on the rickety rocks barely ten yards below. By golly jingos, this Paddy's 49% Proof Export Malt is pure fire.
Now I know I should have listened to Wally and packed spare Long Johns and extra blankets.
The donkey is pressed tight against a leeward wall, looking none the worse for wear after a fairly long haul back from Mrs. Paintefell's victuallers and general store-cum-hostellry up at Crappanoolan's Crossing with a cart load of carrots and two bags-for-life full to the brim with provisions for our fortnight away from Hell.
Theresa Paintefell, the incumbent's flame-haired daughter, alerted me to news from God's Own County by pointing dolefully to her computer screen in the shop's "internet cafe", a dial-up modem one-machine affair crammed in behind damp, faded Burren snap postcard carousels and piles of unsold cerise mohair shawls in cellophane. Ebor Forestry's defamatory biliousness and blatant link-dropping cowardice will have to be dealt with in 2008, once I am sober and dry. I read my emails and picked through forwarded post, only to find Forestry Commotion had sent me the most amazingly witty, novel, imaginative Chrimbo missive, in the shape of a card...containing a packet of tree seeds. What a fabulous way to save money and show they are really thinking about forestry in a big way for the new year. I look forward to Easter with rabid anticipation.
Dr. Connie Furze will be joining me for a couple of days to see out the old year, along with our old pal Middiameter. I will try to get them all to post something if we can all get on the cart and up to Crappanoolan before dark.
And what a year it has been. Watch out for one of those What A Year It Has Been supplements in your daily paper.
I personally cant wait to be reminded about it all.
Going forward (as all the finest pig-faced, stinking, clodwitted bureaucrats are wont to utter these miserable days), going forward into 2008, I am sure suburbanforest will carve a pretentious, garish niche for itself as probably The Second Best Forestry Blog in Yorkshire. We will continue to write drivel, second only to the drivelier drivel of its one rival e-rag.
But for now we return to the essential business of self-anaesthetised oblivion. If you have been, thank you for paying attention. Ho. Ho. Ho.

Groan...infrastructure

2007-12-13T11:12:00.001Z

First, Twig, you mince pie munching, shopaholic, credit card swiping wazzock. When you come into the office reeking of MacEwans Eighty Shilling in future, please remember to not urinate in the shrink-a-sink in front of Mrs Fawcett-Tightly from Tring.
Furthermore, your inebriated reference to our lack of cheer belies your ignorance of our faith. It might have escaped your notice (the shaved heads, the smiles, the robes?) but we are all Buddhists over here at suburbanforest.
Here's a snap of Swami Smitringgith singing the groaning mantra of The Smiling Tree Planter of Ulan Bator
We value your support for suburbanforest and thank all today's many visitors. We would simply ask you to reflect on the vacuuous joviality of your blog. Look deep inside yourself and you will see - the Nolans have no talent.
Blessings all year round.
Wally Miapine

Not just graffiti in the urbs, more a sublime commentary on the absurdity of the driver's situation as he slips by the curling unnoticed plane leaf

2007-12-08T23:09:00.001Z

New M & S Catalogue for Autumn

2007-11-30T22:23:00.001Z

It's not just Harris tweed: it's richly weathered, Laphroaig-soaked tweed edged at the cuffs and collar with the finest buffalo hide (Third Floor, part of the Pissed On range.) Lurking seductively inside, it's not just a conservator, it's air-dried directoir regionale slathered with goose fat and tucked trimly into silk thermal underpanties. Crispin looks entirely comfortable relaxing in the farmyard aroma of his good chum and model pal Christopher...
It's not just the once-chairman of Northern Foods who pressed for the closure of small farms and their consolidation into giant agri-industrial combines, it's the brilliantly reborn but somehow under-dressed saviour of modern forestry who, by dint of his very presence, will make everything alright down in the woods. Sporting a cable-knit combo from our 1984 Revisited range, Christopher comforts himself with a short game of pocket billiards (Third Floor, Men's Classic Toys for Christmas) while earnestly wishing he was back on his 900 acre hobby farm and away from all these ghastly forestry types. Perhaps he is wistfully recalling, as chairman of the Campaign for Yorkshire Devolution his forlorn, madcap hope that "Yorkshire will, not for the first time, show an example to the rest of the country in the referendum later in the year and that lessons will be learned from the success of devolution in Yorkshire so that the poor people of the east of England (Second Floor, alongside Women's Bras) will be encouraged to follow with great enthusiasm in the years to come." (model's glasses his own)

Welcome Aboard. Sorry About the Smell

2007-11-28T15:20:00.000Z

If we had known you were coming over we would have had a once-round with the Bissell.
That is not plastic, that's vinyl covering.
We are not that fond of girl bands (isn't that an oxymoron?) We prefer something a little more...how do we put it...challenging
Thanks for popping in, Eborforest. And thanks for bringing the old Reader's Digests.
Kind regards
Bud
Wally

Yorkshire Forestry Is Dead. Long Live Yorkshire Forestry

2007-11-26T23:49:00.001Z

Trees have finally become the ammunition with which the uberstrategists will, ironically, assassinate forestry as we know it. Already eviscerated by multi-functionality, drawn and partly quartered (so that its vital organs are out on show for all to see) by the plethora of mediocre landscape architects and designers claiming trees as urban phenomenon, trees now have to go through the indignity of their own khaki-slacked side giving them a thorough shafting. Pack it in now and get yourself a job with prospects
doling out unsprayed, maggot-ridden slop to the same chattering fuckwits who did you out of your inviolable right to brash and high prune. The chard-munching bastards.

Dictionary Definitions

2007-11-26T12:41:00.000Z

Deliver, v informal to produce the promised, desired or expected results

Action, n the events in a play or work of fiction, informal lively or productive activity

Plan, n detailed account or proposal of how something can be done or achieved

We're askin: Is Haskins Maskin' Past Kin?

2007-11-19T23:00:00.001Z

Which head will Lord Haskins wear when he finally gets round to reforming the Forestry Commission?
Above, a picture of His Lordship, taken at a recent barn dance (all proceeds to the Vince Carter Redundancy Fighting Fund). And below, dressed for the occasion, at a recent strategy launch in a Barn Somewhere Near York.

Like totally awesome dude....

2007-11-13T23:13:00.001Z

Hapless Point
Leeds

Blessings Tam San dude
Like totally sorry I haven't been in touch for like an age, man. I have been like totally wrapped up in a new cohort of disciples fresh from the mountains, in the Great City Region for the first time. It's like totally awesome. (And I have been shagging that chick from The Cross Terrier on the side - she's a part time lifeguard at the John Smeaton Leisure Pool, so she has a lot of spare time on her hands....not any more.)
Your plight has like gone totally noticed, but we are having a bit of trouble getting the bail. Mick Psmythe is like really digging your plight and is cool with the idea of paying us a wad, but he wants like a stack of outputs and outcomes in return, and reckons on about eighteen months to get the deal through with The Big Cheeses. Their chairman gets his hashish from the same dealer as me, so I have like totally got a link through there, man. I'm on it brother. Totally.
Same shit's going down in The City of Dreams as ever. Still like nowhere near the amount of trees we like need. And I am still telling everyone that'll stand long enough to listen
I've like entirely dug the reason our fellows from The East (Qong Cer Van Zi) are with you in your plight, if under tighter security regime. It's been in like all the papers, man. Awesome. Apparently, there's been this whole tax evasion thing going on down there in the Black Woods. The fellows have like been selling vast numbers of leisure slacks and action shirts to Millets for knock-down prices, and not like totally claiming it on their tax returns. That and some dodgy re-selling of spanking new Vectras to Dales Autos at Cro Qi Hill. It was totally a case of a fit-up by all accounts. The fuzz had gotten on the trail and the chaps you met were found red-handed with a Vauxhall full of well-pressed contraband at the Big Bite Cafe in Fulford. Like totally awesome.
Have to like go man. I am on a promise with The Chick, and then I'm at the temple for some female initiations tonight, so I will need to get some shut-eye and a quick meditate.
Like, totally take care of yourself dude. I have enclosed some shower gel in one of those totally cool squeezable jars with the cool, useful hook on the cap. Saves you bending down in the shower, if you like know what I mean, man.
Write soon.
Master Sim San

A skirt's no use in nick

2007-10-30T08:08:00.001Z

'B' Wing
HMP Ahm Lee

Dear Master
Why haven't you replied to my texts? I thought you would be here by now with a part of that Wad For the Yak's Hair sale. Please reply to this letter with good news, oh holiest one.
Things aren't too good at this end. I'm sharing a cell with two black lads and a Muslim chap. The fact that I am wearing a lovat green hessian monk's outfit didn't help in the first few weeks. I am ashamed to tell you master, that I have removed my Wai Troz garb for now, and chosen the denim path of my wretched fellows. A skirt's no use in nick. Inside I am still Wai Troz to the very core. I just couldn't take any more.
I have met a couple of nice blokes since I have been here. Two fellows from the East, once great leaders at Qong Cer Van Zi. Such lovely lads, and so well dressed. Of course we haven't yet got round to talking about why they are here, of all places, oh great one. Nor why they are in 'H' Wing, the segregation unit....
I must bring this letter to an end. The 'screws' are hovering, waiting for me to finish up. I have to work this morning, sweeping the golden autumn leaves in the exercise yard. They do not know what joyful memories the brush will stir, nor see the broad smile on my soul.
Send words of great hope to my fellow Wai Troz Fraz Te warriors.
Yours
Gai Tam San

Justin Willamson's front end

2007-10-21T18:12:00.001+01:00

"At one point in the race, I lost concentration, hit a stump, and went
over the bars. My front end was nice and crooked, but I caught back up
to Ryan and Kirk. When Kirk gased up for the last lap, he didn't have
enough energy to catch us, so Ryan and I pushed hard to catch Garrett;
we were on a mission, and we were flying. We finally caught him. But it
was too late. The checkered flag shut us down" Justin Williamson
explaining a recent race through the woods...

Time for a mass squat

2007-10-20T22:59:00.001+01:00

We are under a misapprehension in England that land is scarce, that we should be building on brownfield land and sticking up Alsopian cities on stilts.

158,000 families own sixty nine percent of the land, or 41 million acres. 24 million families live on 4 million acres.

Isn't it time we formed an orderly plan to go and grab this land back? Most of it was stolen, taken, acquired by force. We want it back

The UK's top five landowners
(excluding the Crown Estate, the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission)

Duke of Buccleuch
Acreage: 270,900
Value: £598m
Subsidy Entitlement: £20.4m

Estate of Atholl dukedom
Acreage: 147,000
Value: £200m
Subsidy Entitlement: £11.0m

Duchy of Cornwall
Acreage: 141,000
Value: £480m
Subsidy Entitlement: £10.6m

Duke of NorthumberlandAcreage: 132,000
Value: £463m
Subsidy Entitlement: £9.9m

Duke of Westminster(excl London) Acreage: 129,000
Value: £450m
Subsidy Entitlement: £9.2m

The
figures are based on: a) a price of £3,992 for a good arable acre in
the UK in the second quarter of 2004; b) a subsidy entitlement of 113
per acre, which a spokesman for the Department of Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs considered (August 2004) to be "perfectly reasonable to
assign" where an acreage is publicly known. Note, however, that
information about actual subsidies is not available.

Bully For You, Part Two: Engagements

2007-10-19T23:46:00.001+01:00

Fortune shone on the shining monks of Chu Bex that night - the Todmorden Glee Club had cancelled their planned seance to be held in the Function Room of The Cross Terrier (clairvoyant, seer, healer and Glee Club Secretary Sinita Ramsbottom had come down with a nasty bout of stress-related hives after an accident-riddled evening with the ouija board, near Bingley) - and the room, in out of the cold and dark, was available for their saffron and turquoise throng.

The Terrier's Public Bar was too crowded by half, particularly now Waka San's jasper and travertine marble litter filled most of the corridor to the Gents. Many of the regular drinkers, taking umbrage, had retreated into the usually-quiet Snug, where a number of Waka followers were talking loudly about small chunks of battered wood with a zeal only shown by goofed-out religious zombie fruitloops with mush for brains.

In the zen calm of a somehow tranquil Lounge Bar, Sim San hovered at the mahogany counter waving a faded, puce NUFU prayer flag to catch the barmaid's eye, and bought forty-three pints of Crotchety Whippet to appease his thirsty foot-soldiers.

'And one for yourself, you foxy dame.'

'Oooh, I'll have a vodka love, ta very much.'

'Fancy a knee-trembler in the car park at closing - I'm holy, me.'

'Oooh, I'll have to see, you serene devil.'

Gai Tam San, weary from long days and nights strategising and restrategising and refining strategic approaches, drained his handled dimple beer mug in one guzzle, slumped forward, exhausted from his exertions on gong with song, and at his master's every beck and call and whim, and for one short moment was asleep.

'Tam San, my boy' hollered Sim San in the wretched ear of his pupil 'I know we exchanged cold words earlier this evening at the ceremony. But now that you have eaten your woodland mushroom vol au vent and polished my Saab carefully with both hands and feet in equal but opposite precise circles, do you not feel the spirit of our urban forest forefathers rising in your marrow?'

'No master, Sim San, I am pure knackered. I have been at this lark for years now, trudging across this barren wilderness in search of truth..'

'And money' piped up Hu He Hit Win Dit from behind his double bitter lemon.

'...and all I have to show for the effort are these mucky lovat green robes and a tattoo of you, oh coolest one, on my weary rump. Must a Wai Troz Fraz Te monk trudge forever? When will I learn to fly? I wish I could fly right up to the..'

Before Tam San could utter another plaintive syllable, all hell let loose at the pool table. Two Wai Troz monks from Leeds had been playing winner stays on doubles with the Tod locals. A discourse had been engaged upon in regard to the ontological assertion of Billy Bremner's skill level in dribbling and shooting. The Tod lads had accused the Wai Troz lads of committing a bare assertion fallacy. A muscular Wai Troz monk, untonsured and in fact well-haired and toothed, had gotten all cocky by quoting from Descartes' Fifth Meditation, and that's when the thin lad got a barstool over his back and the window got broken with a forcibly hurled roundwood log made from compressed sawdust (brought in to show people by one of the Sau Fiox lot)

In his cell that night, once his head had cleared and the wounds were bleeding less freely, Tam San began to reflect on the place to which his urban forest journey had brought him. At one moment ready to throw in the towel, and within a matter of hours giving some Lancastrians a good hiding with lumps of marble and mahogany. When this episode was passed, and the paltry fine would surely be paid tomorrow by Sim San from that slush fund from Yak's Hair For Wad, where would these roads shaded by fastigeate beech take him?

to be continued...

If it's any consolation, fish get insomnia too

2007-10-19T22:39:00.001+01:00

From Scientific American:

Fish might not have eyelids, but they do sleep, and some suffer from
insomnia, scientists reported on Monday. California scientists studying
sleep disorders in humans found that some zebrafish, a common aquarium
pet, have a mutant gene that disrupts their sleep patterns in a way
similar to insomnia in humans. Zebrafish with the mutant gene slept 30
percent less than fish without the mutation. When they finally drifted
off they remained asleep half as long as the normal fish, the
researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine said.
The researchers, led by Emmanuel Mignot, said they would look for fish that have a mutation that causes them to oversleep or never sleep
in the hope of discovering if sleep-regulating molecules and brain networks developed through evolution.
Spare a thought for the zebrafish when you're next lying awake fretting about the price of chain oil, spark plugs, air filters.

Net curtains

2007-09-26T22:11:00.001+01:00

Getting to know your blogger isn't easy, in this cyber-world of anonymity. To whet your appetite, then, a tantalising glimpse of our suburbanforest headquarters.
Behind the ordinary, everyday facade lies a complex web of cables, wireless routers, aerials and cat's whiskers radios.
Don't we feel closer already?

The Value of Proofreading

2007-09-18T22:41:00.000+01:00

Culled, verbatim, from The Value of Trees in Our Chinggong Region. Too much basketball? Slam dunk da funk mo fo:

If you need to discuss any issues around this draft Delivery Plan, please feel free to contact me by phone (01904-448778) or email (vince.carter@forestry.gsi.gov.uk)

Many thanks for your interest.
Vince Carter
Regional Forestry Manager Delivery Manager

Vince Carter Not Trying

2007-09-16T11:50:00.000+01:00

Vince Carter’s former teammates were dismayed Friday after hearing him admit he didn’t always try his hardest when he played for the Toronto Raptors.

In an interview broadcast Thursday on TNT, network analyst John Thompson asked Carter if he pushed himself as hard as he should have in Toronto.

"Many have questioned Carter’s dedication, his commitment to offseason conditioning and his desire to improve, but some were surprised to hear Carter acknowledge it.”

Sad News in Yorkshire of the Rebirth of Eborforestry

2007-09-16T11:43:00.001+01:00

The Twig is Dead. Long live The Twig.
Those words ring hollow in my ears. Now that I am back from an extended sojourn testing an even newer range of Silky Fox pruning saws in Arctic Finland, with only a pair of turkey-grabbers and a fighter bomber pilot's cowhide neck-brace for comfort in the inclemency, I see from my Googlemail Intray that EF has been sending begging letters again wanting cyber-pals.

Sad News in Yorkshire of the Death of the Twig

2007-09-16T11:40:00.000+01:00

Some say he wore worsted basque and stockings to the office in winter. Some say his breath smelled like Fidel Castro's favourite cat. All we know is that he was The Twig.
THE TWIG IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE TWIG
For years he drove forestry audiences wild driving averagely-priced metaphors beyond their limit into corners out of which only he knew he could get.
The Twig was never seen without his trademark Harris Tweed one-piece racing suit and Safety Hamlet. Early in his career, he spent long hours at the wheel without a care for risk or hazard. It was only towards the end of his cruelly-shortened span that he began to take a more responsible attitude to hazard and risk by listening to those around him
Few knew The Twig, the man. For those who got close, the memory is flat beer and flatulence, fondly-felt. An early grammar school pal remembers him as "a studious boy, all decked out in serge and smoking his father's pipe behind the chip shop." College buddy and Jewish chocolate factory magnate Terry Saul-Gold remembers him as "a studious, drunken young man all decked out in corduroy and smoking his own pipe behind the chip shop". Work colleagues will always remember him as a man decked out by C and A, smoking in the chip shop.
Trees were his first love. Ironic then that the last days should be so taken away by a madness brought on him by the very subject he loved so much.
A memorial service will be held for The Twig at The Bar Convent, York. Leading the joint service of remembrance will be Archbishop John Sentamu and His Holiness Pope Vincecattero III. Speakers will include Derek Patch (Tree Advice Trust), I. Hackenspitter (Hamlet Cigars plc) and the Honorable Fraud Streakland-Unstable.
Flowers will not be accepted. Instead, money may be donated to the Eborforestry Twig Memorial Appeal, with which resource heathland and open space will be established and maintained across previously afforested landscapes.

Dom and Dan In Da Woods

2007-09-14T08:07:00.000+01:00

Dan and Dom in Da Woods, live from a nice wood in Cumbria.
Splat! Dom gets a cream pie in the face. [Audience laughter.]
Splat! Dan pours vomit from his own mouth all over his head and smacks his client in the face with a giant clipboard. [Audience roar with laughter.]
Someone strangles a badger off-screen, and quickly knits it into a tea cosy for keeping tea warm when cooking outdoors o'er a jolly wood fire all fettled with a fancy axe and some really cool knives. Dom is splattered with badger innards. [Audience roars approval.]
Cut to bemused, failed sports reporter and beeb-skirt.[Much laughter and mirth amongst the audience at the feckless pointless muppet in the beige sports pullover.]
Splat! Dom gunges all practical forestry in the gunge tank by gunging it all with gunge. [Huge round of applause from the forestry sector, laughing as a man.]
And now, remember we told you about Marion, the whale-eating magpie? Over to you, Mylene.