On the beech

All was well in my world; the kettle was gurgling, a pristine packet of choccy biccies nestled in my hand and the opening theme of 'Loose Women' wafted in from the sitting room where a comfortable chair awaited my ample bottom. 

            There is a saying that ‘Pride goeth before a fall’ and this proved to be true in my case. I prefer the english version, ‘Pride goethe before the Autumn’ which is easier to understand except for the German poetry. I had built my tree house in Sussex, in Beech Avenue, those two magnificent lines of trees planted in 1787 by the Duke of Wayne just to the North of the South Downs, on the scarp slope of the chalk below Devil’s Dyke. The trees prospered and grew well over the years, benefitting from the calcareous soils and the water from the chalk, bursting out along the spring line above the clay.

            Losing my job because of cut backs was the trigger to change my lifestyle. I had worked in the banjo factory for twenty-three years. I was on the production line, responsible for a team of bridge builders, a very responsible job. You may not be a fan of the banjo but if you think they sound bad when in good tune then you should perhaps go and hear one that has its bridge positioned slightly too far south of the string null point. Sorry to be a little technical but it is important. The banjo company was losing sails so could only afford to produce three string banjos and motor boats. Two people were let go at the same time, myself and George Stradivari who was quite good at his job, for an Italian, but his banjos just didn’t seem to last, after three hundred years they were nearly worn out.

            I thought about what I should do with the rest of my life and decided to go for an alternative lifestyle so I got a simple job for 26 weeks of the year, polishing pebbles, and decided to live like Leonardo DiCaprio the rest of the time, on the beech. I started building my house in a tree with strong branches to support the weight but it was high summer and I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Because of this my tree was on the edge of the avenue and fully exposed to the wind. I didn’t think it was a problem because the tree had been there for two hundred years.

            I was quite happy there and proud of my cosy tree house that summer snug in my bed under the Sussex Downs duvet with the kettle heating on the wood burner stove in the corner. You may remember that year, 1987, the autumn was late and so leaves stayed on the trees for too long. That famous gale came in the early autumn and destroyed many thousands of tree over the country, and Mr Fish’s career, he ended up on the beech as well. Sussex was especially badly hit, the shallow rooted trees of Beech Avenue suffered terribly, at least half of the trees were blown over – including mine. The kettle was just on boiling as I planned to have a cup of tea with the choccy biccys. The tree went over, the kettle emptied onto my chest, scalding me badly, the stove set light to the tree, burning my left leg. I landed on the pebbles and ended up with a bad attack of shingle. The loose woman didn’t fare much better either but, as she lived upstairs, that is another story.

            Life really is a beech sometimes but no longer for me. I went back to the banjo factory and begged for a job in the cat gut department – I worked there peacefully, stringing it out until I retired.

As told to the author by Oswald Formby