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Fairy city beset by the Furies

Writer's picture: CroneCrone

Kings Wood. Old oaks and ashes. The ashes sadly suffering from die-back. One tree so sick that a fungal parasite seemed to have taken hold around its root system - the sprouting heads visible all around the base of the trunk in tiers of nicotine-stained-lung heads with rich brown flanged undersides.


The stems may be edible.


The little mushrooms in the picture - fairy inkcaps, I believe, which mush into an inky paste - were on the inside of an old stump. 'A fairy city' we called it.


The job was coppicing. Cutting big hazel then protecting the cut trunk stumps by 'brashing' - piling up above the stump a load of long, leafy, twiggy bits - to protect next year's saplings from being eaten by deer. In an ideal world, you'd cut some of the big trees,to open up the canopy, as hazel grows fast in lighter conditions, but no one wants to fell oak and as for the ash... The very sick trees will fall in their own good time. Some, though, might recover, become immune. And it would be crazy to risk felling a possibly immune ash tree.


There was a fire, too - and the warmth was welcome. It was surrounded by big whole-trunk logs. Natural benches. I sat with my favourite people and proceeded to talk about dissertation ideas - the mammoths and the kakapos. But I got excited. Too excited. I was warm and happy and with people I like who care about this world and I got loud and sweary and opinionated. An adolescent among adults wanting the limelight.


After lunch, I fell over and bruised my thigh. As my love of my life said, 'I'd be more surprised to hear that you didn't fall over.' I was fine, but the bump was enough of a shock to get the adrenaline flowing and I hated myself for my adolescent sweariness, my philosophical uselessness, my single-person loneliness. I hated myself for the cats and the crow not being enough. I hated myself for the feeling that always, somehow, I fuck things up.


A volunteer friend told me about his bad week and I was glad to be treated as a friend. Entrusted. That was a blessing. And I said about my loudness and sweariness and he said that I am me and that's fine and good and I don't need to change.


But it's hard, always, to feel like the Fury invading the fairy city.



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