Having a bit of a clear out in the loft and came across a collection of my writings when I was in that angst stage of late teens way back in 1981. It was utter rubbish. I must have been mad or stupid to think I could make a go of being a writer. Probably for the best that I trained, instead, to be a Chartered Surveyor.......um.
The Persecution of The Elm.
Children had swung innocently on its lower boughs. The more intrepid youths had scaled its trunk with all the concentration of a climber on The Eiger. In the upper canopy precarious platforms were built on which the story lines of Amazonians and Tarzan were re-enacted with great imagination.
The seasons had been marked by the sprouting buds, early and full blooms of leaves, the cascade of the same in the autumn and, in winter, a lonely silhouette of skyward pointing spikes.
The Elm tree had always been a focus of attention as an object of natural beauty. It could be manipulated as a playground, provide a shady canopy for the occasional picnic party and even provide a source of fuel as, each year the March gales claimed a branch or two.
But now, in old age, the Elm was suffering.
Within its heartwood and sap it felt a dripping and trickling as though its life blood were being decanted away. It was not a normal process of age but a pain inflicted by a tiny living organism thriving as a parasite. It was supplanting the life of the Elm in favour of its own existence. It was an invasion witnessed so many times in the parallel of human history - the fight of the Aztecs against the onslaught of the Conquistadors, the plight of the native and indigenous peoples of North America and Australia and the fight of refugees from tyranny and mayhem.
The Elm was a victim of exploitation. It was being abused and strangled by the cankerous element within its very self. It had to put up a fight in order to have any prospect of survival.
Already there were physical signs of outward decay reflecting the inner torment. Its leaves, once eavesdropping on casual conversations below were noticeably thinning in number and those who had managed to flourish against the temptation of sleep were weak and blighted.
Children, the very joy in its existence, were steered away from the pale imitation of a tree by anxious parents as though it harboured a malicious intent of a murderous glint in the pus seeping bark.
In the absence of tiny voices or the caress of small, inquisitive hands the Elm began to wither. The boughs, unloved and frigid lost their natural suppleness. The platforms so marvellously engineered in the upper reaches rotted away from lack of attention and fell to the ground.
The delicate songbirds, previously constant companions, who had perched on the branches declined the hospitality of the now increasingly bleak environment. Their places were willingly taken by the dark and ominous shadows of carrion . The once fertile and fecund tree now resembled a bulbous and clumsy fruiting body.
The Elm was no longer elegant in the landscape but a scar on the backcloth of the blue sky and greenery of the surrounding countryside. As with all diseased elements in the natural world it would not be long before the Elm would be singled out for felling.
Already the woodman had left his mark in the form of a large white cross in white paint. It was a symbol of impending death as significant as if found on the door of a plaque house or in a Star of David patched onto the lapel of a small, innocent child.
Where before, in dark times, an ancestor of the Elm may have formed a gibbet it was now as if it was itself the criminal and destined for the axe.
With a jovial whistle the woodman wielded his work tool and with the first swing it embedded deep into the sensitive bark. The Elm visibly shuddered at this wounding and with it the last shrivelled and dried leaf was released and deserted its vigil.
Each successive swing and strike penetrated deeper and deeper into the soul of the tree, severing dried and arid veins until with one devastatingly final flash of the tempered steel the great Elm wheeled and crashed to the ground.
No one heard the scream of the Elm, the once majestic but gentle and beloved Elm as it made a subtle and intentional movement in its fall and by doing so crushed the woodman in a frenzied mass of dead wood. As the tree breathed its last the cankerous sheen of the poison had the faint resemblance of the murderous glint of the eye of a killer.
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