I have them, now and again, in spite of, or because of (don’t like the ‘spite’ word) my olding hooha and the general strimble of downstairs sans a trip, and the forgetting of what I said last week about an important something. Seriously? You remember that? Well, go you and your mind. Mine is all heading off on wings of hope and the next moment, proffering itself as a wild opportunity for me to be wild and opportunistic. Just saying.

However, tomorrow a very big 200 year old Pine tree is being felled. It has to come down, split as it is from navel to tit and with the two sides dancing to different rhythms on windy days. We are talking many tons of crash, was this big beauty allowed to fall au naturel. It’s too near the road, too close to wires and sheep and fences, never mind all the dog walkers, the workers who come by daily. The tree surgeons who will make this whole thing happen, have a tricky task. I wonder if we who don’t have a clue about such skills, have, well, a clue. I don’t. They will have to clamp, climb, position, focus, watch the wind, catch the moment, pick their time to cut. My respect to them.

t thinks me, about loss, half loss, about those with skills who come in to make a situation okay, about the times We did, about the times I did. And I remember bits of it all. The awful times, the fears, the losses, the pain of them, the gradual lift back into the light of ‘Oh Fk’ another season. A tree falling was just an irritation. How immediate and how young was that thinking! What it meant was no delivery serv ice (not that it happened much), no school run access (yippee), no guests in all the wrong clothes leaving nor arriving. Lawny it was a fracking nightmare, and often.

At the Best Cafe Ever today, as we cleared and scrubbed and sorted all the flotsam and jetsam of a very busy season, I was aware that this tree is coming down tomorrow. I know it needs to happen, and I will wander up to watch the skills of tree surgeons. It’s 200 years old. I’ll still pine.

Not just for her