Kentish Chainsaw Massacre Narrowly Averted
By Kent Barker
I had my collar felt the other Sunday—metaphorically speaking. I was
working up in the orchard cutting the roadside hedge. It was a volunteer day
organised by our local community orchard group and had been advertised around
the village. We’d alerted immediate neighbours lest the sound of our chainsaws
should interfere with their Sunday morning activities or make it hard to hear the
Archers. And then we noticed the police car cruising the lane.
Now we don’t get a lot of crime down our way. A few garden tools go
missing from time to time and we did, a year or two back, have our old tractor
stolen from the middle of the field. But by far the most dramatic malefaction was the explosion at a
nearby bungalow which destroyed an outbuilding. To this day no one is sure if
this was actually a crime or merely an accident. The more conspiracy-minded were
adamant it was an attempted ‘hit’.
The thing is that the farmer who lived there is not very
popular. He has an unpleasant habit of
bellowing across his field to people on the public footpath: “put that
§@$±€*-ing dog on a lead”. This is particularly irksome because, as I may have
mentioned previously, there is no legal requirement for dogs to be kept on leads
on public rights of way so long as they are kept under ‘close control’.
(Equally farmers have absolutely no right to shoot them unless they are
actively worrying sheep and it is the only practical way to stop them). Anyway,
it did seem a tad unlikely that this particular land-owner had made himself so
unpopular with ramblers that one or more had tried to blow him up. And, if it
was a contract killing, then it was spectacularly unsuccessful because
he’s still there and still shouting at walkers.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the police car. It wasn’t long before
two burley officers emerged wearing bullet-proof vests and with handcuffs and
truncheons swinging from their belts. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if
they’d also had powerful tasers within easy reach in the event of trouble. Indeed,
looking at the assembled group before them, they might well have anticipated a
problem or two. Normally members of our
working party would be considered mild-mannered, well-dressed, professional gents,
mostly in their early sixties, greying and/or balding. But, on this occasion, we
were all dressed—and equipped—to do battle with Mother Nature. Rigger boots
with steel-toecaps were the order of the day, along with grubby jeans,
moth-eaten jumpers and torn jackets. But, on this occasion, it was not the
apparel that proclaimed the man so much, as his
implements. Three of us had chainsaws in hand. Two had sharp bill-hooks, while another
two sported big bow-saws with vicious looking serrated blades. But the pièce de
resistance was our vice chairman who was carrying a heavy machete of the sort
used to lop off heads in South American revolutions or African tribal
massacres.
So the opposing forces lined up. The hedge-cutters had the
higher ground, but the police officers definitely had the advantage of youth. I
was standing towards the back not, you understand, out of cowardice, but
because that’s where I happened to be. So I couldn’t actually hear the ensuing
conversation. However, later, as we
re-ran events over a pint or three in the pub, it seemed that someone had
called 999, alleging that we were causing criminal damage to the hedgerow and
stealing wood. The complainant was named the grandson of the person who had
land-plotted the orchard back in 1972 and who still seems to consider it
belongs to his family, even though they’d sold off over 80% of the plots.
This, of course, raised an interesting problem. Just who
does own a hedge? Next day I thought I’d ask a lawyer friend of mine and shot
off a quick email. The reply started
ominously: “The ownership of boundary features is a very complicated area of law and
entire books have been written on this single subject. The following is a
general guide:...”. There then followed
three pages of closely typed case law which I tried to follow until the line; “As Lord Hoffmann explained in
Alan Wibberley Building Ltd v Insley [1999] UKHL 15, this presumption is really
two presumptions.” At which point my eyes glazed over and my
head sagged.
So
perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the nice police officers decided that this
was really a civil matter and nothing they need get involved in. With just one
backward glance at our armoury, they got back in their patrol car and returned
to the station, doubtless to tell tales of how they’d narrowly averted the incipient
Benenden Chainsaw Massacre.
ends.
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