Love thy neighbour

Neighbours in the country are different from neighbours in the city. For a start, there are fewer of them.

- Greg Dixon

'My John Deere is better than your John Deere!" I yelled, then laughed like an idiot. Bob the fencer smiled. But behind his dark glasses, I'm pretty sure he was wondering what the hell I was on about: I was sitting on my little John Deere ride-on mower. He was in the cab of his enormous John Deere tractor. If there was going to be any sort of, ahem, measuring contest, it was game, set, match and enormous trophy to him.

Bob, who lives up the road, was at Lush Places to fix up the two fences that were given a terrible beating when we had a couple of our sky-high shelter belts trimmed a couple of months back.

One fence, the one that runs next to a Leyland cypress hedge, lost a few posts, broken off at ground level, and required a partial facelift. But the one that runs 90m below a belt of alders was completely munted and would need Bob to perform the equivalent of fencing open-heart surgery. It took him two days to complete, with two new strainer posts, and the result looked as neat as stitches. His wire work, posts and stays are as fancy as any art gallery installation. Bob is an artist as well as a surgeon.