An unexpected gift of a huge oak to behold, as B and I meandered around his village of Thrandeston, after rain, early evening. It was huge with three branches as big as trunks soaring up. A massive wound on one side, so it must have lost a 4th branch at some time (Alice thinks during the 87 storm). In the The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter often draws analogy between human and tree life. With skin and bark: our skin stops our insides fall out, it is barrier that protects; it releases and absorbs moisture; prevents pathogens entering; sheds skin daily; changes over the years; and is sensitive to contact, pleasurable or painful. The difference is just in the the vocabulary. Bark. Bark fulfills the same functions as skin. A barrier, protects, releases, and sheds. The folds and wrinkles in a trees bark which deepen as the years progress, just as ours do.
I had to remind myself how to estimate the life of a tree – girth grows roughly 2.5cm in a year measured a meter from the ground. But this is a pollard, so must be older than the girth.
A week since B’s operation, with a Herman Munster scar of metal staples, he was on good form albeit meandering morphine. Good to walk out, walking passed the stories of the people in his community of over 50 years. Enjoyed his anarchy of actually enjoying no car life, a potential edit of an existing tomb stone, a name crossed out and his inserted as a correction. What would your novel be about? he asked. So it was I found in a dusty back room an idea of 15 years ago, a story of ‘doing good’ going so ‘wrong’. Hadn’t visited this for many years.
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