We got a very odd email this week from a guy calling himself Mr Zulu !! offering to go halves with us on 83.5 million US dollars if we would just forward all our personal information and express an interest in this !! It was an obvious scam of course and there is no 83 million or any other amount of money to be just given away. It makes you wonder though where these people get their information from and what makes them decide which businesses will be daft enough to fall for it. Usually they ask you to send a cheque or deposit some smallish amount of money in their bank account for “administration” charges and after that you will never hear from them again. If you receive any approaches from a Mr Zulu or similar, my advice would be to pass their details to the Police. As the expression goes “of it seems to good to be true then it probably is”.
On a work note we are still struggling with the weather as the snow continues to fall. However we have been able to do some private tree surgery work in Durham and Spennymoor. This has involved removing overgrown and dangerous trees from private gardens. If left to grow unchecked these type of trees can do a lot of damage to properties, footpaths and drains so it is best to get them removed -ideally before the birds start nesting in the surrounding gardens. We have been supplying birch bundles to Carlisle Racecourse as we do regularly, so they can rebuild some fences between race meetings. We have also been building fences for a couple of local Point to Point meetings so we are hoping these will be going ahead – weather permitting.
Andrew has also been on the telly, both the BBC and ITV local news, as he decided to add grave digging to his skills and went on the first course to be held at Houghall College for several years. Apparently it is a dying skill (boom boom) and there is a shortage of grave diggers in the area so Andrew decided to add another string to his bow which he can fit in around his tree surgery work. He has not dug his first official grave yet but I will let you know when he does !!