Eleven-Year Leaf War Erupts Again On Churchway

A hedge on Churchway has not changed sides since 2015.

What has changed sides, repeatedly, is the leaf litter beneath it. The arrangement is understood to work like this: a man on the odd-numbered side blows the leaves under the hedge on a Saturday morning, and a woman on the even-numbered side blows them back on the Sunday, usually after lunch, which the paper is told she considers the civilised hour for it. Neither has ever raised the matter with the other. They have instead raised it with everybody else, which is how the Herald came to be standing in a road at half past eight on a Tuesday counting leaves, a career outcome nobody warns you about.

The leaves themselves are now thought to be largely the same leaves. Horse chestnut, mostly, with a reliable minority of sycamore, and all of it by this point so thoroughly handled that it has stopped behaving like garden waste and started behaving like a pet.

Because it is autumn, the operation has resumed, and the village has resumed watching it. A man outside Bloomin' Fruity has for several years been offering to settle the whole thing with a rake, an offer both households have declined by not acknowledging it.

The parish council has never been asked to intervene and would almost certainly enjoy being asked.

There is a version of this story where somebody knocks on a door and it ends in ten seconds, and the fact that nobody has done that in eleven years tells you everything about how long an English person will carry something rather than mention it. The pile is due back across the hedge this weekend. The Herald will not be covering it, because the Herald has looked at itself, and we are going to go and do something else.