After the family wedding at the weekend, I needed to do some height work around Casa Buchan. Specifically remove some trees from my phone cable, paint my house and trim a hedge. Of course, I didnt want a health and safety disaster such as the photo.. So I hired a cherry picker - a mobile, self powered platform on a stick - to get my hairy arse up in the air. Far far far up in the air. About 3 hours work. I guess. So how did that go ?

Firstly, the thing weighs about six tonnes. Its got HUGE batteries and runs off them for DAYS. So you can imagine you really dont want this running over your foot. The trees I had to clear were a good 40 feet up, so I thought a picker with a 60 feet span would do the trick. I dont know if you've been up at 60 feet, on a platform that - well - sways - before. There's NO WAY that this thing is going to topple over, but of course, try telling the lizard part of your brain that this is the case. I think this video sums it up:

Finally, the trees were cut, and we managed to get the cherry picker out of the muddy track area. It took a push from the guys relaying the road beside the pub (Thanks!), two broken nylon 5-tonne webbings (When they break, by god they break!), and I still have to repair the neighbours fence. Still.

I then inched the thing back to the front of the house - somewhere where I had take it before, and somewhere that USED to be a major road, capable of taking 40-tonne lorries. No worries..

Ah. No. Bogged down. Right to the axle. So basically, it was resting on its chassis, wheels merrily spinning. Sigh. I managed to paint 70% of the front of the house, and cut 40% of the hedge. And then started digging, jacking, digging.

After all the excitement, and the physical effort of digging the dammed thing out, I just went back to working from home:

Oh. Two of my long-suffering mates - Ralf and Derek - both said 'Oh, we have ladders to do this. You should have said..'. Sigh. Next time, I'll avoid DIY..