Ebor Forestry

Time to reassemble.

A year without blogging

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

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

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...

Who's watching the watchers, eh?

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?

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

Who's watching the watchers?

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

Anyone still there?

Do foresters dream of electric squirrels?

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

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...

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

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

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

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New M & S Catalogue for Autumn

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)

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Welcome Aboard. Sorry About the Smell

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

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.

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Dictionary Definitions

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?

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.

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