There’s a cherry tree at the end of our street. It’s just finished shedding its blossom, from branches that hang down like Rapunzel's tresses, cascading out of the tower where she was in forced - not self - isolation.
Great long tresses she had, which would be no good to her now, as she’d never get a haircut in this town and she’d be better off keeping well socially-distanced from any wannabe princes or other latchicos who might come carousing with their
Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair.
Like in the fairy-tale.
We’re in the middle of a fairy-tale ourselves. Locked up in our – well – towers, with our hair growing out all over the place and nothing to put manners on it only the trusty electric shears that would be better suited to clipping a mountain ewe.
We’d love to be at the end of it, because to live in the middle of a fairytale is to live in suspense and uncertainty, where every day is a bad hair day. Even for a baldy like me.
My wee electric clipper makes a hornet’s drone of a noise, just as the sounds of summer gear up, around our estate: electric hedge-clippers that sound like steel false teeth rattling in a jar; electric and petrol mowers – you get a couple of them going in tandem and it’s the sound track of the World War 2 film The Battle of the Bulge. Then there’s strimmers, voracious whirligigs that make a swarm of locusts sound like a silent picture.
And of course the power hoses underscore all the others with roars last heard in that Inferno your man Dante wrote about. No fairy-tale that.
There’s even the odd chainsaw. A lumberjack neighbour brought round his chainsaw and cut down our cherry tree, a while back. I miss it – the tree, not the chainsaw - and seeing the blossom up the street reminded me of it. I’d like another one, not just for ‘keeping up with the Jones’. The people at the end of our block are not called Jones anyway. If that’s what you heard, that’s fake news, which actually started with a story of a cherry tree. Least in the USA, it did.
George Washington, landowner in the British Colony of Virginia, general, rebel, politician and slave owner, cut down a cherry tree, not with a chainsaw, but with a hatchet. He was only a lad when he did it, so I’m guessing it was a small one. No matter. His da was fuming and tackled him. “Did you cut down my favourite cherry tree, son?” Young George replied “I cannot tell a lie.”
His father thought his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees and he didn’t chastise the boy. Probably rewarded him with a horse or land or more slaves. It’s a story about the virtue of honesty in the young George Washington, a future US President. Turns out it’s fake news; false; a myth; untrue; a fairytale. In my game, it’s called fiction. Like, saying that drinking cleaning products might be good for your health.
I’m glad the neighbours have a cherry tree. I look forward to seeing the blossom again next spring. When we might be out of our self-isolating towers, back onto the street and meeting up on our way to the hairdressers. I’d love a bob.
Broadcast on BBC Foyle, The Breakfast Show, 11.5.2020
Available on BBC Sounds |
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
No comments:
Post a Comment