The Sycamore Blues

The Sycamore Gap tree, felled by two ‘morons’, dominated the news this evening, that act of unbridled vandalism is only second in line to the orange buffoons behaviour. Happy that his poll rating is low, happy that more Americans think him now an overblown twat when we knew it all along. Incredulous at his press secretaries, blonde bimbos that speak untruths as neatly as he does.
What a genius he is – I know he is because he told me so – and I know that life will never be the same as long as we have egotistical politicians in charge.
I sit on the edge of the armchair and explete under my breath exhausted by the same bad news. North, East, West and South, whether local or national the stories are always the same. Killing over there, stabbing over here, ignoramuses brandishing guns, desperados wielding machetes, unrepentant leaders calling the shots whilst the rest of us sit on the edge of our armchairs whispering expletives under our breath.
If the News was called Swen, or Wens would it be any better? If the news was not a litany of misery if it was called Ewns would it be any different? Nobody never learnt nothing by having a nice day but the daily diet of negativity is tiresome.
So its time to look beyond catastrophe.
The bluebells are out, we have a little wood at the end of three fields and a style. A wood so blue that it shimmers in the sunlight. I’ve been meaning to get to it before the flowers droop but I haven’t had the energy, and tomorrow its going to be 29 degrees.
I have three apple trees, the left one and the middle one are covered in apple blossom, but the right one under the oak tree is sad. If we cut it down then I need to replace it with another tree. A cherry tree methinks. I’ll be dead before it fruits, but a cherry tree with pink blossom would be perfect.
Trees have always been part of my life. There was a big old oak by the bus stop opposite where I grew up.
The day they sawed it down, to make room for a bus shelter, my mother and I held onto to each other as we watched from the kitchen window. I cried. I can remember the feeling of loss, watching the Sycamore Gap tree come down had the same effect. I cried.
When we moved here from the East End my first act of protest was to get the farmer to remove his lock and chain. A little copse with cuckoos and woodpeckers, a little lake and trees, was hidden through a kissing gate. I wrote a stinging letter to the council saying I hadn’t moved from the city to be kept out of land by a selfish farmer. I won and he had to cut through the chain. The hedge is overgrown now, you have to fight through blackberry brambles to find the kissing gate and now the farmer has put cctv cameras and signs everywhere. When I walk the back road there are little green notices telling the public that its private property. I take down the signs and hide them in the undergrowth to no avail since they are always tied back up again.
The new kids on the block, mullets and aggressive dogs, walk the land now with their rifles. They dont scare me I can shout louder than them. I’m not meant to walk down the avenue but I do and I hug my tree. My tree with lipstick marks where I’ve kissed the trunk, my tree with its burrs of a bum and a face near the canopy. My tree that I cry on and listen to. It’s my tree, although in truth it’s everybody’s tree like the Sycamore Gap. What possessed those two vandals to chainsaw it in the dead of night? I want them punished, but how? Prison is too good for them, they should be publicly humiliated, held responsible for their atrocious actions. They should be made accountable for Hadrian’s Wall and the pain they have caused. Made to work for years and years and years, without payment, yeas and years of hard graft, in woodland, years and years of physical labour, not shackled like a slave, but letting the trees teach them to repent.
As for the dictator of the free world, what would be a fitting punishment for him? Silencing him every time he opened his mouth? Ssshing him? Shutting him up? Sitting open legged and interrupting him. Interrupting the lying bilge that comes out of his mouth. The man is detestable and his followers, either stupid or sycophantic, will pay the price for their allegiance, for his wickedness does not understand loyalty, he’d throw his own mother under a bus if it would save his skin.
Nobody knows how to rid the world of him, not yet, but there will be somebody who sees the nakedness of this emperor, and reveals that his new clothes are but a sham and that he is nothing but a lardy, narcissistic slob with a dinky knob and a supersilius smile. He is as scary as he is ineffectual. He represents the end of the world as we know it, for the howling dogs of truth are are going for his butt, and before too long those pesky curs will take hefty chunks out of his arse and then we’ll all be able to sleep peacefully in our beds.
Let light stream forth into the minds of all and let truth and love return to earth. It’s simple really. Not easy but simple.