A LAST HURRAH

Five days ago

This morning

After a frankly rubbish summer, the autumn has been spectacular. The cherry trees on my street have shown off their triumphant autumn collection, the leaves turning gold and red in a final blaze of glory before departing for the winter. When I started writing this a few days ago, the wind was blowing gently and the leaves were fluttering to the ground in a gentle but constant rain of gold, leaving evenly-spaced pools of colour on the pavement. Today they are stripped bare, and winter has really begun. We wait, huddled around our chimneys and radiators, for the spring, when the street will turn into a wonderful catwalk of pink fluffiness.


Talking of pink fluffiness, Christmas is six weeks away, and Mattel seems to have bought all the Belgian TV channels. Pink fluffiness is back in fashion, it seems. Germaine Greer, it was all for nothing.




I have always loved to see a tree outside my window. In Africa I would watch the lazy swaying of the palm fronds as I lay down for my afternoon nap. Godwin the servant said shaking that palm tree was the cause of his sciatica, but it gave me lovely peaceful dreams. In Poland we had an apricot tree which dropped 200 kilos of fruit the very first summer we were there. I have never been able to stand apricots since.

Back in Guildford we had a huge lilac tree that was as tall as the house. It was lovely to sit in its shade during the summer, but it was getting much too leggy and needed cutting back. One day Harold came into the back garden and said there was a chap outside with a chainsaw and a flatbed truck offering to prune trees. The chap, who spoke in a dialect that was reminiscent of Brad Pitt's character in "Snatch" (although sadly didn't bear any physical resemblance) and was visibly a member of the ancient and venerable travelling community, said he'd chop down the dead cherry tree in the front and prune my lilac for £40, which seemed reasonable. I was loath to tell the gentleman how to do his job, and assumed he would take off the very high branches carefully starting from the top. I disappeared into the kitchen to let him get on with it.

After a brief bout of chainsaw noise I heard a sickening cracking sound followed by an earth-shaking thump. I rushed outside to find my beloved lilac had been split in two vertically - one half still standing, the other half lying in agony on the lawn. He had simply sliced the biggest branch at the base, and the upper branches which were entangled at the ends with another tall branch, had brought half the tree down with it. I burst into tears. That will teach me to trust a bloomin' pikey.

In an unguarded moment I revealed in the last comments box that there is a portal in this blog leading to the Supreme Knowledge, which has sparked off a flurry of interest. It has been there for months and none of you has had the gumption to find it! I will only tell you that it is not a piece of clever techno programming, not an Easter egg, waving your mouse about hopefully will not help you. Even the Tech Guru has not managed to find it yet. It is a straight piece of detective work, and devilishly simple. If you find it, I will know. First one to find it wins a box of Belgian chocolates.

Off you go.