During late January and February 1990 recurrent storm force winds brought down an estimated 500,000 trees in the West Midlands and tree surgeons were too busy to come and cut up this tree.......so Tony hired a chain saw and together with the bow saw he is holding in this picture, he removed the tree without any problem........but two days later he injured his back and Marie was then left to do all the heavy work for the next twelve months! 

In the UK during that 5 week period in 1990 an estimated 15 million trees were uprooted but, much worse, 97 people were killed partly related to severity of the storms but especially because most of the storms occurred in the day-time rather than at night. A devastating storm with a higher wind speed had also hit the UK 3 years earlier however the storm was quite localised and occurred at night so mercifully loss of life was much less on that occasion.