Trees: Tops

I’ve always loved trees. Well, more accurately I suppose, I’ve always loved woods. Apparently in Japanese, there's a particular symbol for "tree", and the word for "wood" is the same symbol, clustered together several times. I know no Japanese so have no idea if this is true or just entirely made up, but I hope it's true because it just seems eminently cool.

For me, one tree on its own is like a single pea: you assume it must be there by mistake and start casting round for a few more. What I really like about woodland is the whole kit and caboodle.

There's that satisfying crunch underfoot that makes you feel vaguely intrepid. Even in evergreen forests, with fewer actual leaves, there’s always something falling from the trees (pine needles; old bark; chipmunks). That feeling of hiding from the outside world – in a decent forest, you’ll probably be sheltered from the worst (and the best) of the weather. And yeah, the trees themselves aren’t bad. So old! So big! Hmmm, so articulate, Sarah.

We visited a great new wood last month, and have just returned from my favourite forest in the world. It's got me thinking about woods I have loved, or at least, woods that hold memories for me. And sure, a list of favourite forests should *really* be filed under "cures for insomniacs", but hey, I'm one of those too, and if this ends up curing my insomnia too, so much the better.

So: without further verbal faffing, here's the first one:


1. Royal Forest of Dean, summer 1989









Starting with the oldest and best of forests - the one I've always known just as "the forest". This seems a timely one to be choosing, too, since it's A-levels/Leaving Cert time and this whole memory has that edge-of-adulthood, end-of-reason flavour.

I was eighteen, and just finished with A-levels and thus with (high) school forever. I’d grown up on the edges of the forest (pretty much literally, if the copse at the end of the drive counts) and didn’t need distance from it to know how gorgeous it was. Bluebell woods; babbling brooks; tiny little ponds accessed by twisting, made-up lanes and appearing out of nowhere through the oaks.

That last summer before leaving home is, of course, framed with nostalgia and a lot of the more dubious or just-plain-tedious details erased, and what I remember is this: Blazing hot days; picnics by the stream; fashioning hula skirts out of more random debris and just kicking back with that endless feeling of freedom. Bottle upon bottle of The Dreaded Red. The Blues Brothers soundtrack; Squeeze; local bands with such glorious songs as "Sheep on Drugs" ("fair blows my mind"). One particularly brilliant evening of partying in the forest; cookouts; music from the car stereo; lying back on the undergrowth and counting the stars. Driving through the woods at dawn and coming across a stray sheep (not unusual in this land of sheep badgers) , so putting it in the boot to give it a lift to its rightful patch.

Still, and always, my favourite forest; still, and always, one of my favourite eras. If you could wear memories on your jeans like patches, this one would kelly-green and blazing blue for the sky, and on my left knee, where I'd catch sight of it daily and grin a bit.

Tongue, twisted

When people ask what nationalities the kids are, I sometimes say that Jonah is English by parentage, American by birthright and Irish by idiom. Friday seemed to prove that. I was drying him off after swimming. He pushed his head out from under the towel and beamed at me.

“What’s the craic, Sarah?”

Apparently our firstborn is now officially assimilated, a true Irish twinkle. I love this, and it confuses me entirely, too. If your children are learning a “real” foreign language – by which I basically mean, a language not your own - the boundaries between (your) mother tongue and the other one are relatively clear, and relatively uncontroversial. Mummy says potato, Daddy says patate, let’s call the whole thing polyglot. There's a right way and a wrong way for each language, and as a parent you help your child navigate the nuances and speak plain sense, if not plain English, as often as possible. Our kids, though, are going to grow up speaking several shades of the same language. We left Seattle before Americanisms had really ever had a chance to grab hold of Jonah’s toddler psyche, so although in weak moments Dave and I may still refer to a “diaper bag” and the “stroller”, Jonah has absolutely no idea what we’re banging on about.

I imagine the same thing would happen to Lucas if we were to suddenly up sticks to Siberia. Right now he may call plaintively for a “deedoo” whenever he wants his “dodie” - which we, his doting parents, would know as, first, a dummy (British English), and secondly, a pacifier (American English, where we learned our baby vocabulary). But give him a month or so and he’d be barking at us in clipped military tones and demanding whatever colloquial Soviet term he could muster. Still, of the three versions of the English language available to us in this family, we’re still finding it interesting to figure out how to deal with the two in usage. If Jonah says, for example, “Will I hang Lucas out of the window?”, do we “correct” him to the British English? – “Shall I hang Lucas out of the window, darling” (or “NO, for god’s sake”).

Or, since he’s being brought up in Ireland, and thus learning what we should apparently refer to as Hibernian English, should we let it go?

After all, if he were speaking German, or another language with different grammatical structure, it wouldn’t occur to us to change his verb formations to better suit our delicate ears. And he’s not speaking “my” English – he’s speaking his own English, the English, paradoxically, of the Gaels. What we really don't want to do is dilute Jonah's own command of the language too badly so that he's relentlessly teased at school for his weird British pronounciations - that would be a cruel, cruel fate. It's only really the grammar that makes us twitchy - Jonah's choice of Irish vocabulary seems cute rather than feeling odd. I think this is because, as a parent, you become used to helping your child to navigate the vagaries of the (English) language - or, to be precise, its grammar - yes, Jonah, you "put on" your trousers but you don't "put them off". So learning to leave well alone feels both dichotomous and confusing (a bit like that sentence, doubtless).

We wouldn’t dream of meddling with his accent, which is acquiring the full Dublin lilt even to our relatively neophyte ears (who knew that "green" had 3 syllables to it?). And as for his question on Friday? Well, I had to consult with my Irish pals here, but I'm fully versed in the answer now. To "what's the craic, Sarah?" my only answer can be, "I'm grand, so". We're all getting there, slowly but (to be) surely.

One these things is not like the other one

Drive from work to daycare, Seattle-style: look up to see two bald eagles circling overhead.

Drive from work to creche, Dublin-style: pause at zebra crossing to let past a nun in running shoes.

Of course, neither of these would have happened in London because you'd never drive to work (and I didn't have kids the years I lived there, so I definitely wasn't driving to daycare) - but I did once encounter a guy with a gun on the tube. Does that count? In case anyone had wondered whether we were truly English, my friend and I, rather than running screaming off the tube, just inched our way gently down the crowded carriage. Our theory was that by putting distance between us and the gun, we wouldn't get too splattered when the inevitable bloodshed occurred. Yes, this sounds as ridiculous to me now as it seemed intrinsically logical then.

Who, Sir? Me, Sir? - Yep, me, apparently

I’ve always maintained that a huge chunk of my personality is that of a pre-adolescent boy. There’s the inclination to dress primarily in jeans and trainers; the love of bad action movies (not for nothing did we go to see “Wolverine” the evening of my birthday). Yeah, sure, OK; but that could define most of the population at some point or another, I suppose. There's always been some other, random element of small boys (but not small girls, who seem so much more knowing) that seems so familiar to me.

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled back across one of my favourite-ever kids’ books. It was turned into a TV series too, I think, but beyond my time, so I don’t have any associations of that side of thing; mine are all with the written word (story of my life, really). The linked version seems to be some kind of teaching copy; the battered old edition I have says it was printed in 1983, which seems about right.

Anyway, two pages into re-reading it I came across this description, and it struck such a chord that I belted down the stairs, book in hand, screeching, “look, it’s me!”. Substitute the "Hoomey" for "Sarah" and it entirely sums up the 12-year-old-boy-ness I've been trying to articulate all these years:

"Hoomey, a transparently innocent, completely unmalicious, undersized, earnest child was given to state unpleasant truths out of pure honesty. He was sensitive, vulnerable, amazed when his honest truths gave offence".

I’m guessing this post would be hideously narcissistic if I wasn’t relating to a fictional 12-year-old boy – or maybe that just makes it worse….

It's just a jump to the left...

I just spent twenty-four hours in a time warp. From the time I rang the entry bell to Nick’s flat, it felt like I’d gone through the door at the back of the wardrobe. Instead of Narnia, though, I’d arrived in my past, more or less as I remembered it from 10 years ago. Same flatmate, give or take a few years; same workmates; same far-more-play-than-work-mates; same book fair - nerd's paradise for someone like me. 

I've never been nonchalant about working with and around books; I'd be far cooler if I were, but then that's true of most of my life. "Achingly hip" isn't exactly the phrase used to describe me: "Ridiculously enthusiastic" is probably a more accurate description. And it plays out in every aspect of my life; always has, always will, I dare say, at this point. 

 The details of the trip play out in my head over and again. Paused at traffic lights, I make list upon list of the sheer number of old pals I bumped into or sought out. I pass myself in a mirror and find I’m beaming like a belisha beacon at the memory of phrases repeated, grooves remembered, faces flickering from confusion to recognition (“You’re back from Canada!” came the frequent exclamation. Well, yes, and no. Never went to Canada; not exactly “back”). . It felt entirely surreal after six years out of England to be back in situ, and exactly right at the same time.

A hangar full of books. A room full of people who, for a few brilliant years, were my people and, it turns out, still are. A chocolate cake the size of my head and my old partner in crime to share it with. Whatever the opposite of a hangover is, I’ve just had one. 

Bubbly

I'm boarding the plane on my own for the first time since Jonah was born three and a half years ago. No little hand clasping mine, no voice at knee-height asking “are we on the hairplan yet Mummy?”. No Top-Gun style signalled conversations with Dave, still at ground level folding up the buggy with Lucas wriggling for freedom. Just me, a copy of the Observer to read in glorious silence, and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. It’s astonishing how quiet it is. And how speedy. Children are as notable by their absence as their presence, it turns out.

 

Dublin has been sun-washed today, its normal pallour replaced by a rosy glow. I pull out my phone and dial. “Home” flashes up on the screen. My boys, big and little, are out in the garden, starting the barbecue as requested by Jonah. Everyone is happy; there has been a trip to the park, and ice creams all round, and now there will be charcoaled sausages, and foil-wrapped bananas with molten chocolate chips. I visualise them as I speak to everyone in turn and realize something that is ridiculously obvious and incredibly good for me. These are my people, this is my family. There’s a place for me in it that’s unlike any other landing slot in my life.

I’ve always been terrible at getting on with things. It takes me an hour to get from the sofa to bed at night, distracted raccooning from one pretty-shiny thing to another before making it up the stairs. Which is why it’s taken me 3 ½ years to go away on a work trip. And it’s definitely time.  I’ve been holding on too tightly, standing too closely to my life, worrying that things will disintegrate without me there (delusions of self-importance, much?). And, of course, this all can only get in the way of enjoying it properly. Twenty four hours away is a chance to step off the roundabout and admire the view before leaping back on. 

Signalling

It’s been six years now since we last lived the UK – a fact that I keep wanting to hold out at arm’s length like Yorick’s skull and gaze at quizzically. Just doesn’t seem possible, that one.

Prolonged absence is supposed to soften the needles of homesickness, but the trouble with needles is that they’re small and pointy and can interfere just when you’re least expecting it.

Every day I drop the kids off at nursery and drive the 20 minutes to work. I’ve got used to the huh??? qualities of Irish radio and have settled into its rhythms, knowing as I look at the clock after the daycare drop whether I’m going to be settling in to the hurling coverage (hurling involving men with sticks rather than booze and toilets) or whether we’ll have moved on to the National Ploughing Championships* .



About a month ago a new needle poked through. As I crest the brow of a particular hill, it turns out that the radio picks up a satellite in Prestatyn or something and British radio comes crackling into force. I’d never considered myself particularly nationalistic - madly in love with my birthplace, sure, but not brayingly English by any stretch. Nevertheless, there was something so heady about hearing traffic reports on roads that sounded familiar rather than trying to decipher where in the hell Sallynoggin might be and whether I should care.



At first, it was just Radio 1, which made me feel old relatively often, since the last time I regularly listened to Radio 1 was back in the 1980s. Then, oh blissful day, I hit upon Radio 4, which sometimes feels to me like the original NPR, but with distinctly more attitude. Very hard to be pissed off about being caught in traffic and late for work when what it gets you is Sebastian Faulks talking on Desert Island Discs about the inherent conflict between the interior mind of women (constantly “in a state of audit”, as he put it) and men (“intermittent”).



I can only get British radio for about 5 minutes, as I coast down the hill towards the sea (reasons to not hate my drive to work #2: I see the sea, for God’s sake! For a split second every day it’s like going to Devon when I was little and being on hyper-alert for that first glimpse of the water).



Five minutes of British radio does two things: it’s just short enough for me to get the slightly-sick feeling that comes with being far away and still feeling 12 years old, and it’s just long enough for me to want to start shouting at the radio. Good times.




*My favourite ever quote from the National Ploughing Championships came from an interview with a young farmer who’d made it through to the final of Freestyle Farrowing (I think I’ve made that up but it’s entirely possible that it’s a real category). The interviewer, fresh from the Lisbon Treaty, asked the farmer what it took to make it through to the final. “A tractor and a plough” came the reply. The interviewer, clearly realizing he’d have to use his piercing journalstic skills to get to the bottom of this, dug deeper (as it were): “No, what sort of qualities does it take?” The young farmer thought for a moment. “A really good tractor” came back the response. Game over.