Tales from the Trees (December 2022):Arborist exposes all

ABOUT a fortnight ago I was fast asleep when I was suddenly awakened by our secret alarm system.

This system is very, very good and equally cheap, at around £30 and if you are within 40 feet or so of your hard-earned equipment at night, I’d recommend buying one.

Basically, you place one or two transmitters near your shed, side access or driveway and then put the receiver next to your bed – but remember to set the transmitters above the height of cats or you’ll be up all night!

READ MORE: Tales from the Trees (October 2022): Ducati motorbikes and fixed penalty notices

Anyway, the ‘Driveway Alert’ (as it is advertised) woke me up. Quickly I checked the CCTV on my phone and spotted torchlight, which is never a thing a tree surgeon wants to observe at midnight.

I’ve been robbed 37 times now, or at least the business has. Much of this has been the odd chainsaw, fuel, trailers, etc, but one time I lost the lot, so my patience with the men of the night is thinner than it might be.

My son was up and already outside, so I rushed to join him as my wife rang the police and my daughter locked everyone but me and Doog in as well. Sounds dramatic? Well, we rehearsed for this exact scenario and as I followed my son into the night to see what awaited us I felt pleased that, just for once, we were ready.

One of my earlier clashes with the unwelcome ones happened in the autumn of 2001. It wasn’t the first and I discovered it by a curious misfortune, though didn’t stop it in time.

It was a warm day, but regardless of the temperature I wasn’t wearing any underwear beneath the layers of PPE. As far as I know, the HSE has no stipulations on this – correct me if I’m wrong, I’d love to know if there’s something in their guidelines. I don’t like pants, but I won’t comment on what I think of the HSE.

I was working with a fellow called Tom, the two of us in a village about seven miles from home. There was a line of hideous, ivy-clad ash to dismantle, not big, but awkward and I was clambering around unhappily when something unfortunate happened.

“Tom!” I shouted, trying to attract the man’s attention above the noise of the chipper.

He looked up and shut the machine down. “What?” He wasn’t a man to waste time on the niceties of conversation.

“Send me up a sweatshirt.”

“Are you cold?” He looked puzzled. We were both sweating; him because of the heat, me for other reasons as well.

“Just send it up,” I said, urgently, as I had a problem that was, well, embarrassing.

I’d been reaching across to get to the next tree, legs split as wide as a gymnast and my chainsaw trousers had finally given up, not just a bit, but spectacularly. There was literally nothing between my favourite body parts and the world and my trousers were now little more than two entirely individual leggings.

Worse, it was nearly noon and the customer was likely to bring tea out, so I desperately needed a temporary outfit. 

Tom sent up the sweatshirt, but I didn’t tell him the reason, that I was about to undertake an aerial dress-making exercise. I’m pretty sure he’d have delayed and dithered if he’d known and I needed action, not laughter.

It isn’t best practice, but having widened the neck of the newly arrived shirt, I stepped in and wriggled it up under my harness. Using the arms as a sort of improvised belt, I tied it off and was pleased with the result.

Not only was I now wearing a skirt, I also had double the amount of advertising space, because the new dress had my name and company logo. However, I realised it wasn’t suitable attire for tree work, at least not in Wiltshire (these things are probably more acceptable in the city).

As I descended, I awaited the inevitable cruel banter, but was saved by the appearance of the customer, a middle-aged and likeable housewife who I’ll call Carol (I’ve long since forgotten her real name).

A lot of people are brilliant in social situations, quick-witted and able to converse fluently and easily with anyone, but I’m more of a ‘say the first thing that pops into your head’ bloke. This is dangerous if you have a slightly weird head, which I must admit I do, but the situation I was in now demanded a comment.

Standing in the brash, trousers in rags and wearing double-blue embroidered skirt and matching top I simply said, “Do you like my skirt? I made it myself!”

I’m not sure about Carol, but Tom did like it. A lot. He semi-guffawed, smirked and grinned. “I do, it’s lovely, Dave.”

I almost certainly shot him a look of some sort, but Carol pretended it was nice, though

I’m not sure she fully understood the reasoning for my ensemble, or why I’d drawn attention to it.

Anyway, the paradoxically fortuitous part is that I had to go home, find some more trousers and then return, better dressed. It was annoying, but I couldn’t have carried on as I was, regardless of whether the HSE would approve if they did decide to pop in for one of their friendly and incredibly welcome surprise site visits.
Back at home, the family was out, but the rotters were in, or at least they had been.

There used to be a secure shed at that house, as well as a garage which was full of tree things and a motorbike, so I locked any excess machinery in my shed, which was less secure. I think someone had watched, waiting for me to leave and then robbed me in broad daylight. The lock and shackle were torn off and while I was still in business, I wouldn’t be doing any fencing for a bit. My post-hole auger was gone.

“Bxxxxxx,” I swore, hoping they wouldn’t realise how badly you could hurt your thumbs if you didn’t use it correctly, though I guess it ended up sold in the pub for a round of drinks.

I was still dressed in my new skirt when I ran into the road, but there was nobody around. Back in the shed, I realised there was still a hedge cutter and an old but usable chainsaw as well as most of my hand tools. This either meant the thieves were only planning on doing a bit of fencing, that their business didn’t include trees or hedges, or that I’d arrived in the nick of time.

I suppose my insistence on wearing my chainsaw trousers up to the point where they finally succumbed to the rigours of work was a blessing, otherwise I might have lost more kit.

That evening I toured around on my motorbike in the forlorn hope I’d somehow bump into the miscreants, but of course I didn’t, nor did I ever find the tool in Trade It, but that didn’t stop me looking.

Many years and thousands of pounds worth of stolen gear later, I was in my yard armed only with my son and a torch, looking for the bad people again. The wannabe thieves who’d tripped the alarm had vanished, presumably on hearing us exit the house.

“Split up,” I said to Doog, who headed for the fields behind while I skirted around the barns, torch off and furious. We spoke on the phone, but there was no sign – they’d gone. Or so we thought.

It was less than seven minutes before the police arrived in numbers. If that sounds unlikely, it isn’t, not after what happened to me a few years ago – and to our animals.

There were eight police, including a plain clothes type in an unmarked car with a colleague who may or may not have been armed response. There was a drone team and plenty of uniforms.

I played back the CCTV while Doog showed the other police personnel the damage to our lock-up. There was nothing missing, apart from the alarm transmitters, which the villains had spotted and thrown into the field. 

The CCTV gave the impression that the gang – we counted four – had left, so I wound the footage back and saw a van on the image that might have transported the thieves away. It was because of this that we made our first and only mistake.

“I think they’ve gone,” I said, pointing at the frozen image.

“Shall we check with our drones, just to be safe?” asked one of the coppers, keen to try out the new technology.

Eventually we decided against it, there didn’t seem much point.

A female police officer then said something that turned out to be quite important. “You’ll have to secure the lock-up. They might be back.”

I doubted it, but Doog and I used lengths of four by two and long bolts to make the building safe and were tired by about 1.30 am, so went angrily to bed.

I’ll bet there isn’t a single person reading this who hasn’t suffered similar. It’s confounding and wrong, but seems to be back on the rise. Perhaps it’s the cost-of-living crisis?

Anyway, the following morning and slightly less pumped up, I spoke with the lady who has horses behind us and after explaining what had happened we checked her CCTV.

What we found was shocking. 

The four men were still on site at 2 am, or just before. I checked my own CCTV again, at that hour, and we are pretty sure the security lights that came on at that time weren’t set off by cats. I think the villains hung around to check our repairs on the lock-up!

That means they watched, hiding in one of the barns and waited, because that is where they emerged from in the early hours. I cursed the misinterpretation of the innocent passing van and my insistence not to use the drones, but at least nothing was stolen.

And this latest incident matches the other two decades back in another way: both involved a fashion malfunction.

It was about 1.45 am when we had wearily trudged into the house and I suddenly noticed something about my son’s footwear.

“What have you got on your feet?”

He looked down and did a double take. “One chainsaw boot and a smart brown slip-on.”

“Why?” I tried not to laugh.

“I dunno, I was half asleep and didn’t even think about it.” 

It was an emergency I suppose, but I at least was smartly turned out in matching boots, a tucked-in shirt and trousers. I don’t remember getting dressed at all, but I reckon I must have been on auto-pilot, putting on my normal outfit. 

It is funny, or sort of, but there again it isn’t.

Why should that happen? Why do we all need to keep taking the losses? To redress the balance in our favour, even if it’s only by a little, I have a recommendation, two in fact.

Firstly, no matter how good your security is, get an audible alarm, preferably a secret one that is on your phone or a cheap driveway version that will save you a lot of equipment. CCTV is okay, but you need to wake up first and the audio warnings are brilliant.

Also, as well as making sure you double-check that the perpetrators have actually gone before you go back to bed, make sure you have an easy-to-wear outfit at your disposal.

The odd thing is that not one single policeman chose to comment on my son’s footwear. Perhaps they thought we’d had enough for one night.

I still don’t wear pants though.