Two men and a dog

In our “Where are they now” series we come across young people of the Benefice doing an extraordinary range of jobs. You also come upon some magical things as you cycle around the neighbouring villages. The photo below shows a little herd, or is it a flock? of chain saw carvings for sale outside a sparkling whitewashed cottage. These were clearly created by someone to whom all wood is special, but some bits are more special than others.

James Shackell and Stuart Stimson

As we admired the collection an amiable young man came out to see if we were potential customers. I recognised him as Stuart Stimson, one of the proprietors of Willow Tree Services.
Stuart and his business partner James Shackell are two 28-year-old ex-Arthur Mellows students who decided some years ago to have a go at something different. They both came from very practical backgrounds, and having been friends for most of their lives, thought it might be good to go into business together.
Not for them the mundane life of a wage slave, or the four year grind of a degree course with debt being the only certain outcome. Stuart had spent some years maintaining the Thomas Cook and Pearl grounds, and James had been exploring the world.
So these two young men, one from Helpston (James) and one from Glinton (Stuart), decided to qualify as tree surgeons.
Apparently this requires expertise in all sorts of trades. Apart from the obvious requirement for chain saw skills, climbing and working with power tools whilst dangling in a harness, and understanding trees, a tree surgeon has to be able to mount a tree rescue.
I had never thought of that, but it is obvious when you think about it. If your mate is injured whilst aloft, it is your responsibility to get him down safely.
I have often wondered how tree surgeons drop a tree in a confined space, and in a given direction. Apparently there is a science to this. You can force a tree to fall in a direction other than the obvious one, but it must be a bit heart stopping when you have made that final cut, and there is that magical pause before gravity takes over and many tons of tree come crashing down - exactly where you have decided! Stuart and James spend a fair bit of their time putting right the disasters that unqualified people have caused when attempting tree surgery.
Some disasters are natural. A chestnut tree decided to drop into a city car park on a recent wet Friday afternoon, and to impale an Audi TT sports car in the process. No one was injured (except the Audi TT), but witnesses say the most awesome thing was the speed with which the pieces of that big tree were sawn up, ground up, and transported away by Stuart and James, thus releasing all the other cars in the car park. It makes you wonder what our forefathers did before the advent of modern power tools.
It all sounds very macho, and we all have the standard image of the check shirted lumberjack calling ‘Timberrrr’ as an 85-foot pine tree comes crashing to the ground. Nothing could be further from the truth; these two young men have a deep affection for trees, and an understanding of the wild life that we barely see from the ground. Indeed, if they find an occupied nest the job stops until the young birds have flown.
Trees are also home to a bewildering variety of wildlife, and the foliage helps to filter toxic pollutants from the atmosphere, quite apart from the amazing job that they do in converting carbon dioxide, that we can’t breathe, into oxygen that we can.
You will often see Stuart and James driving slowly around the Benefice in their Willow Tree Services truck, with Barney the van Labrador parked between them.
Barney guards the kit when his colleagues are busy. His job is to bark very loudly if necessary.
You would have to go a long way to find two men and a dog more in tune with their environment.
Stuart and James advise people to ensure that anyone whom they employ to work on their trees is properly qualified and insured, and to always take tree advice from Peterborough City Council if they live in a conservation area, or if any of their trees are subject to a tree preservation order.