AS I work and live abroad at present, I once again have to thank the Review and its great staff for keeping me up to date on recent events back home.

I consider myself to have been lucky in life as I have great family and friends backing me whatever endeavours I have wished to engage in. My family home is at Sling and it has been in our family for many years. We are all proud of it.

On reading a recent edition of the Review I see that some of our four-legged natural inhabitants decided on a dawn raid of my folks' property, damaging the well kept lawns and prized small crops. Well you might say this happens, it's par for the course in this part of the world and you would be right.

However, as in most cases, there are two sides to the story. Mum and dad have put their whole lives into the family home making it what it is today. They are well known throughout the Forest and those that know them appreciate what they have achieved and hold them in high esteem.

On seeing their hard work strewn across the driveway and the hairy perpetrators still mooting through the billiard table lawns, you can imagine how they felt. Dad being the mild-mannered that he is, wanted to do battle with the monsters. But mum advised him against it.

So with telephone in hand he tried to contact the great white hunters out at the Taj in the hope that the powers-that-be could send out the required rescue team. No help came forth.

Now call me an old traditionalist but when I went to school common courtesy was part of the teaching. Have things changed that much? For future reference, here in the Forest we do call our residents back.

The end product was as follows. Dad decided he could no longer wait and called a couple of the old guard from Lydney Rugby Club who arrived shortly and dispatched the said piggy problem in great haste and with all the military expertise of an SAS raid. Well done and thanks boys. A pint of Bulmers finest awaits you on my next trip home.

Now, my point is where are the guys who are getting paid to alleviate these problems?

I do hope they are not off with a touch of swine flu

– Kerry Meredith Edwards, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.