Flying Broomsticks

Hit by Chips


Tractors performing hedge-trimming duties have featured on our commute quite a bit of late. I've even noted how they can hog the whole roadway on a blind bend quite legally because they have a flashing yellow beacon on them, which gives licence for them to do ANYTHING they freaking well want.

I love how they can spill their debris across the carriageway and how that debris has lots of sharp bits you couldn't walk barefooted over so must be dangerous to the flesh and maybe even the tyres? But it's okay; they have the yellow beacon licence to do what they want, of course.

A twist then, rounding a corner past the Privet junctions I saw a yellow winky-poty through the hedges and slowed expecting a licenced obstruction in my path but was relieved to see it was trimming the hedge from the side of the field. Excellent, throttle on, I thought.

Then I got hit by the shrapnel of trimming from an unprotected blade set at just the right angle to spray me with 7.62mm bore hazel twigs and hawthorn spikes. Some bits were only chips while others only needed my Sister-In-Law sat on one to qualify as a light aircraft. Closing speed was about 160mph; their velocity was noteworthy where the heavier shards were making a good 40m distance across our path.

Firstly, I'm glad my visor hadn't been fogged and up at the time and secondly, I was picking splinters out of my jacket and crouch in the office. I think this a case of near injury to insult?

A tractor trimmer where it should be; in the MIDDLE of a f£%$ing field!

Perhaps I have a prejudice coming on, do you think? (Toward tractors that is, not my Sister-in-Law; that's a pre-condition isn't it Nikki?)

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