Moat people know about climbing plants potentially being bad for the stone or brick work on a house as the roots dig their way in opening up fractures but I have another tail of woe.

We have a clematis – a climbing plant on the garage/electronics workshop and I noticed it was getting near to the phone cable so I asked the landladies gardener to cut it back for us – as I had visions of it tearing the line out of the wall!

She then promptly gut straight through the phone line – as we both work from home via broadband internet this was bad news – and it got worse. This is a chargable repair on BT’s part but they were very quick in responding and sorting the whole thing out and they even had to put a special junction box on as there was not enough cable slack to splice it back together again!

It did feel very much like one of those Greek tragedies – in trying to prevent the cable being damaged I made sure it was damaged :/