Hedge Fucking
July 26, 2018 11:30 AM   Subscribe

Oh yes! The English are known for attributes such as cricket, tea, and national economic suicide. Perhaps less well known is their preference for intimacy within (or with) hedges. A mumsnet user asks for advice: “I'm so tempted to cough loudly or say something but for some reason I just keep quiet and feel weird listening to other people's sex noises.” Writers are the most notorious: “One year they actually hung signs up on the hedge in the hopes of discouraging him. It didn't work.” And if there's no-one around, then as a distressed topiarist (interview) observes: “I just peered out at about 04:30 in the morning and there was a guy on top of her and going through the motions of having sex with her.” In no-nonsense Scotland, they just remove the hedge.
posted by Wordshore (67 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was very confused as to whether people were having sex with each other in hedges, or having sex with hedges (...how?!).

Spoiler alert: it's both!
posted by Grither at 11:35 AM on July 26, 2018 [28 favorites]


Mr Tyssen added: "I don't want them to behave like that with my privet lady. She's too privet, or private you know?"
He's sure got a... possessive relationship with his own personal hedge that he does not have sex with, oh no. Their bond is purely platonicprivet.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:36 AM on July 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


Wordshore- just when I think I’ve learned all there is to learn about rural England from you, you surprise me and teach me something incredible. Also gross and icky (sticky? EW)
Kudos! I think....
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:37 AM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Also I would like to give a slow clap to your post title which is just perfection.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 11:38 AM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


This is a circumstance when you hire a Hedge Fun Manager.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:39 AM on July 26, 2018 [74 favorites]


I love that the English question writer is too polite to scream "Get the fuck out of my damn hedge" or dump a bucket of water on them but just sits there trying to ignore their sounds. Of course an American would probably just shoot them.
posted by octothorpe at 11:42 AM on July 26, 2018 [16 favorites]


So that's what it means to not be alarmed by a bustle in your hedgerow? I never understood that line!
posted by Calzephyr at 11:45 AM on July 26, 2018 [66 favorites]


But you fuck one hedge...
posted by backseatpilot at 11:47 AM on July 26, 2018 [26 favorites]


"a spring clean for the May Queen" - is that what the kids were calling it in those days?
posted by InfidelZombie at 11:47 AM on July 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


  KEEP CALM
     AND
KEEP SHAGGING
   HEDGES
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:48 AM on July 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


Wow, I guess a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:50 AM on July 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


KEEP CALM
AND
KEEP SHAGGING
HEDGES


Keep calm and carry on shagging hedges, surely.

Not to be confused with Carry On Shagging Hedges, one of the less-remembered entries in the sex comedy film series.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:54 AM on July 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


distressed topiarist

User name up for grabs!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:54 AM on July 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


You might think sex with hedges is weird, but I say let the person who hasn't ever faked with a statue cast the first stone. It's kind of a thing
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:55 AM on July 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


"I just peered out at about 04:30 in the morning and there was a guy on top of her and going through the motions of having sex with her," he said.

Methinks this is something that could be remedied with an intrafemoral planting of stinging nettles, poison ivy, or just good old roses.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:57 AM on July 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


Hedge Fucking

I suppose it's better than horses?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:58 AM on July 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


I somehow missed that horse comment when it was posted and now I think my brain is entirely broken.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:00 PM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I suggest a sign on the hedge saying "Please Leaf Me Alone"
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 12:04 PM on July 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


This is a circumstance when you hire a Hedge Fun Manager.

posted by GenjiandProust at 2:39 PM on July 26 [11 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


Dear Mods:

Please close the thread. Genji won.

Love,
Bellman.
posted by The Bellman at 12:06 PM on July 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


This sounds like a good way to get stabbed by a very angry ninja in disguise.
posted by delfin at 12:16 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Mod note: comment removed - best way to not start a derail is to not start that derail!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 12:19 PM on July 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


Doggers seems to mean something different in the UK than it does in the USA.
posted by MtDewd at 12:20 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


This was such a big problem in the late 90’s/early 2000’s that Oasis wrote a song to draw attention to the isssue.
posted by dephlogisticated at 12:21 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Doggers seems to mean something different in the UK than it does in the USA.

“I love those doggos and puppers!”

*scandalized English gasping*
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:23 PM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


In other recent news an Uxbridge man has been banned from every farm in England. Cow molestation.
posted by biffa at 12:27 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Doggers seems to mean something different in the UK than it does in the USA.

Remember to ask about cottaging if you come over.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:29 PM on July 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


The New York Times(!) did a reasonably good article about dogging in England, back in 2010:

Swinging Heaven says that the practice began in Britain in the 1970s, and that the term comes from the phenomenon of voyeurs “doggedly” following people having sex. Others say that practitioners claim to be “walking the dog” when they are, in fact, going out to meet naked strangers in fields....

...Alternative suggestions, discussed at a recent meeting of the Surrey County Council Cabinet, included deploying rangers to patrol the site on horseback; encouraging hikers to roust doggers with actual dogs; and filling the field with potentially bad-tempered bulls.
posted by Wordshore at 12:29 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Do I not understand what is a hedge? How do you get inside it, let alone have sex in it?
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 12:35 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


How do you get inside it, let alone have sex in it?

{sigh} We have to do this, live on MetaFilter? Okay.

When a mommy hedge and a daddy hedge want to make a baby hedge...
posted by Wordshore at 12:37 PM on July 26, 2018 [16 favorites]


Suddenly this song makes so much more sense!
posted by xenization at 12:47 PM on July 26, 2018


Remember to ask about cottaging if you come over.

I recall someone relating a story about being on a flight back to Canada (maybe it was in a thread here) - when Canadian cell signal became available, some kids from the UK on some sort of school trip began tittering madly as "Rogers" appeared as the service provider on their phones.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:47 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Fuck those kids must have been bored. That or time travellers from the 50s.
posted by howfar at 12:50 PM on July 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


I’ve just come to the realization from the Book of Mormon musical.

Engle-Land isn't an actual place. It's an idea. A metaphor.

All the stories the prophet Wordshore has told us... are just metaphors.

Yeah. You don't think a man actually fucked a hedge, do you? That's fucking stupid.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 12:53 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Do I not understand what is a hedge? How do you get inside it, let alone have sex in it?

Hedge = shrubbery.






I very nearly said it was "a bush" and realized that wouldn't have helped in this particular instance
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:00 PM on July 26, 2018 [22 favorites]


You don't think a man actually fucked a hedge, do you?

The humble hedge is but one item on the entire humping smorgasbord of a resident of fair Albion.
posted by Wordshore at 1:01 PM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]



Methinks this is something that could be remedied with an intrafemoral planting of stinging nettles, poison ivy, or just good old roses.


See, I'm kind of wondering about that because I put a hawthorn tree out in my yard here in the U.S. several years ago and I researched carefully first and I would swear that I found stuff about how hawthorn was very common for English hedges and those bastards have huge sharp thorns and I'd think you'd get hurt trying anything anywhere near them.
posted by dilettante at 1:13 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


The hedges in the UK are hawthorn? Ok wow that’s even more confusing because in SF hedges tend to be things like rosemary bushes or junipers trimmed into a low square shape and I was thinking the worst risk a dogger was taking was to come home smelling suspiciously good but Hawthorn? That’s a bit prickly for fun time behavior!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:19 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Spoiler alert: it's both!

Talk about hedging your bets!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:25 PM on July 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


The Mumsnet thread is gold. I love OP's clarification as to how she knew the exuberant copulators were human and not wildlife. (pg. 3 for the curious. Not sure if it's too bawdy to quote here. Then again, we are in a thread about folks having intimate relations with shrubbery...)
posted by Ann Telope at 1:34 PM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


The humble hedge is but one item on the entire humping smorgasbord of a resident of fair Albion.

You suggest a humping smorgasbord and all you have is a lamp post?

"Cow slurry fetishist goes to jail".
posted by biffa at 1:44 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]



This is a circumstance when you hire a Hedge Fun Manager.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:39 AM on July 26


So, for "continued growth".....they must want the D?
posted by lalochezia at 1:47 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


"Cow slurry fetishist goes to jail".

I’m going to need some brain bleach thank you. *shudders*
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:51 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hedge = shrubbery.

Ni!
posted by The Bellman at 1:57 PM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


@imbadatlife (poll result):

Fucking a hedge is exactly as divisive as Brexit
posted by Wordshore at 2:11 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Cow slurry fetishist

Sounds like someone rolled a natural 1 on the character traits table. Possibly a 01.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:28 PM on July 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


Ni!

shh!
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:44 PM on July 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


... very common for English hedges and those bastards have huge sharp thorns ...

There was a movie about this back in the 80s. I believe it was called Prick Up Your Rears.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 2:53 PM on July 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


"I've been awakened many times - mainly by men and sometimes also by women messing about with her and making a lot of hysterical noises.

What would happen if this problem was contemplated by a Marxist theorist with a weakness for chart-toppers of the late 80s and perhaps also the Shondells?

Maybe we would get...

*puts on sunglasses*

Here she comes now sayin' hedge-e-mony
Shoot 'em down turn around hedge-e-mony

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:59 PM on July 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


I was imagining the SF version of this- sweaty people rolling in the rosemary hedges, police suspecting people over their suspicious herbal smells- but then I realized we have the Folsom street fair which probably eliminates the need for dogging here.

Also suspicious herbal smells are legal here now.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:19 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hedge = shrubbery.

More like rubbery!
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:39 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


You suggest a humping smorgasbord and all you have is a lamp post?

And a bicycle, a Hoover, and the pavement.


That's about it. The rest of them just haven't been caught.
Go on, use the blender. I dare ya'.
Now get away from my doorknobs and the mailbox
posted by BlueHorse at 4:07 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


That’s a bit prickly for fun time behavior!

I saw what you did there.
posted by dilettante at 5:13 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


You suggest a humping smorgasbord and all you have is a lamp post?

I think it's terribly unkind to publish a photo of the lamppost .... it's blatant slut shaming
posted by mbo at 5:15 PM on July 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Maybe he just wanted to lighten the mood.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:42 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Tangentially related to the "cow slurry" article -

One of the suggested "read this next" articles on that same page was titled "Speedboat Seducer Makes Fatal Error".

Reading this thread led me to make a wildly incorrect and overly-baroque assumption about the content of that particular article before reading it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:46 PM on July 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


So that's where Groot came from.
posted by traveler_ at 6:31 PM on July 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I fucked a hedge and I liked it....

Seriously, dude put a naked lady hedge on the *front* lawn and what did he expect to have happen? Put that shit in the back.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:55 PM on July 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


It’s a hedge! Who cares what shape it’s trimmed into! Who sees a hedge and thinks “imma fuck it!” I just... cannot compute any of this.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:42 PM on July 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Surely since this is Mumsnet someone should have told her to go round and offer them a penis beaker?
posted by dowcrag at 2:11 AM on July 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


The psychiatrist should be played by Richard Burton.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:44 AM on July 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


The humble hedge is but one item on the entire humping smorgasbord of a resident of fair Albion.

You suggest a humping smorgasbord and all you have is a lamp post?

"Cow slurry fetishist goes to jail".


We take you live to Brexit...
posted by stannate at 12:18 PM on July 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


They haven't actually jailed David Cameron. They just should have.
posted by howfar at 4:38 PM on July 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Who sees a hedge and thinks “imma fuck it!”

Some will fuck anything. I am not gonna go look for examples though.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:35 PM on July 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Following the silent hedges, needing some other kind of madness
posted by Mr. Yuck at 5:38 PM on July 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May queen
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 5:15 PM on July 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Dogging!
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:26 PM on July 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


Let people fuck where they want!
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:36 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


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