After receiving a letter from the council late last year which informed me I had to cut back a tree overhanging the footpath, I’ve been a little bit annoyed with them. I don’t deny that the tree was overhanging but it was more that I was the only one to get a letter when there are seven other trees as low or lower than mine was. Including the council-planted and maintained tree on the nature strip which my tree was growing next to…

Since I’d been forced into prompt action under threat of a fine, I decided that I’d grown sick of walking around two particularly bad overhanging trees from a park. One is a live tree which completely blocks two-thirds of the footpath and the other was six feet behind it - dead as a doornail and essentially just a collection of sharp pointy sticks at eye-level. After personally squeezing past the live tree and almost removing an eye on the second tree as I straightened up, as well as watching other people do the same, I thought I’d report it to the council so they could trim them both back.

After ringing the office once and seeing no resultant action, I called back to find my complaint had been lost and therefore it needed to be re-listed. I did so and a couple of days later the council obviously turned up to prune the two trees. Except they missed one. Somehow they decided to completely remove the dead tree which was a good thing, but ignored the densely growing tree six feet away. This, of course, means I need to ring them again to ask them to go back and do the other half of the work they were requested to do in the first place. And they wonder why people make fun of the council-provided services…

PS: Diana actually thought the SPOTD award for today was going to go to the guy who boarded the tram with a small dog and spent a fair bit of time nuzzling with it in either (1) a display of affection or (2) a desperate attempt to contract some sort of zoonosis. However, we held out until we got home before awarding the prize and the council employees snuck in at the last chance.

Categories: SPOTD