CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: I’ll use the trusty billhook, thanks, not the nagging £5,000 hammer
Kew Gardens: A Year in Bloom
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Mountain Vets
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Here’s the DIY tool no man ever wants on his workbench — a £5,000 hammer that nags you when you do the job badly.
Surely that’s a wife’s job: ‘This shelf isn’t straight . . . you’ve taken too much off that door . . . don’t let my dad see the mess you’ve made of that grouting . . . ‘
But Kevin, the head of tree collections, was getting a constant stream of criticism from his overpriced kit on Kew Gardens: A Year In Bloom (C5).
His hammer, part of a sonic tomograph unit designed to map the health of wood beneath tree bark, had a cable, two big yellow buttons and a passive aggressive attitude.
Kevin, the head of tree collections, was getting a constant stream of criticism from his overpriced kit on Kew Gardens: A Year In Bloom
Sir David Attenborough buried a time capsule at Kew in 1985, due to be unearthed and opened after 100 years
In a flat, female, American accent, it scolded him with every blow: ‘Please tap again. Signals were not heard.’ Kevin heaved a sigh. Some days, he said, he could knock all around a tree and never get the technique right.
There must be days when he envies his colleague Steven, the conservation supervisor at Kew’s sister garden in Wakehurst, Sussex.
Steven was coppicing hazel, chopping the clumps of saplings back and using the wood for posts in hedgerows. This technique hasn’t changed for 1,000 years and Steven was rightly proud of his skill with the traditional tools.
Stripping the shoots with a curved knife called a billhook, he said: ‘You looked after your billhook. It was the tool that made your livelihood.’ And, best of all, your billhook never talked back.
The old-fashioned ways are dying out, as we discovered in a segment about the restoration of Kew’s pagoda. Its upper storeys are guarded by gargoyles in the shape of Chinese dragons.
Weather gags of the week
After Film4 aired White Christmas on Monday, the Great! movies channel on Freeview dug out a Sam Shepard thriller called Cold In July. If it ever snows in Britain again, here’s hoping they treat us to Some Like It Hot.
They are far from authentic, though — moulded from a plastic polymer using a 3D printer.
One of the reassuring aspects of gardening is how slowly the plants and trees grow, compared with the frenetic pace of human life. In the hothouse, an Emperor Alcantarea was just coming into bloom, flowering for the first time in 20 years.
Sir David Attenborough buried a time capsule at Kew in 1985, due to be unearthed and opened after 100 years. But a century is nothing in these gardens, where the arboretum was begun in 1759, during George II’s reign.
We saw the magnolias in full springtime display, the trees lit up with their bulbous, candle-like petals.
Narrator Bill Paterson explained there’s no other plant like them, because magnolias started to evolve differently from every other flowering tree 150 million years ago. Now that’s old-fashioned.
The old ways are much adhered to in rural Northern Ireland, the setting as Mountain Vets (BBC2) returned.
Farmer Aidan sat with his cattle on Rathlin Island, sharing his sandwiches with a couple of cows, which preferred chewing the crusts to chewing the cud. Aidan didn’t mind the company. ‘They’re better than some people,’ he nodded.
This lovely series is a reminder that, despite what we usually see on telly, there are vets in other places just as beautiful as the Yorkshire Dales.
Callouts could come from 50 miles away. The microphones eavesdropped on a receptionist as she booked an appointment for farmer Brian, who described himself as ‘fair to middling’.
‘No bother,’ she said, ‘I’ll throw you in the book, sure.’ I hope she was sending the vet for Brian’s animals and not him.
The vets treated all sorts of pets, including a cockatiel with a stomach ache and a bearded dragon with a poorly tail.
The most heart-warming story saw the birth by Caesarean section of six Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies. Gentle coaxing with a blanket rubbed them all to life and they squealed and squawked for their first feed. I could never get tired of watching that.
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