Grace is graceful even in death. Especially in death. There is something about the elegant sweep of her branches. She is Grace Kelly as a brunette. I once played rounders with a girl called Grace who looked like she was out on parole. In fact I think she was out on parole. I don’t think she liked Grace Kelly much. She didn’t look like Grace Kelly, that’s for sure. She looked more like B or The Freak from Cell Block H. I read somewhere that Grace Kelly had acupuncture on her clitoris for hedonistic purposes. I was shocked. Grace was pure, untouchable. Prince Rainier was short and unattractive in that special way only royals can be. That sort of trivia sticks in the mind. She was probably a Sagittarius.

What I like about Grace Falls is the completeness, the way the trunk is snapped clean: the whole tree down in one. Like when you break a wine glass stem and there are no splinters. Neat death. Nothing messy about it. Grace Falls was cut down just as she exited puberty and the gawky period was finally over. Nobody expected it. The flats behind her are due to be knocked down as part of a local regeneration project. So Grace jumped before she was pushed and became tragic like Sylvia Plath. I wanted to use her to create a raised bed in an eco-salvage kind of way. But Dr Blog says it’s not practical and he is right. I think my friend Giles Kent should use her whole for one of his sculptures. She should stay whole. Giles! Sand the good lady down.

So, I decide to theme in on trees and what do you know? Tree world goes beserk. Old Dames are split asunder and young upstarts are ripped from the soil and tossed carelessly aside by the wind. M called on the day of the storm ‘It’s the Elder, she’s gone down: it’s the end of an era.’ M has had the elder ever since the beginning. The Elder protects the house. In Sicily the Elder is the ‘preferred wood for driving out serpents and thieves’. It is unlucky to cut them down. The wind pays no mind to forest law. The wind does as it likes. I liked the high winds. It’s like a winter Mistral. I got blown in little skits across the road as I cycled up the hill. Not right into the path of an oncoming juggernaut, but enough so I knew the wind was serious. This hardy Senior toppled onto the house that had been annoying it for five decades. Every spring it sprung with tight green leaves, fresh and crinkled as a newborn. Every spring the house ignored the tree and gazed straight through it onto the road. Ha! An unexpected, premature end.

Stumpy used to be big, bad and powerful, but they lopped his limbs off. Who are the mysterious they? The surgeons. Stumpy used to be King of the Park, but he got too big for his branches and the powers that be decided to take him down a twig or two. A gang of men arrived on a yellow vehicle and clambered up with their chain saws and super-sized scalpels in hand. They said it was for his own good as they sawed and sliced. All of his outstretched branches were fed into the Great Tree Chewer which spat his extremeties out as sawdust in five minutes flat. What do they do with sawdust now it’s not scattered on butchers’ floors to soak up the blood? But even as an amputee he has a regal air. He is still alpha fauna, and whispy little birches and half-naked planes still fall for his sweet talk and promises of virgin woodland and old oak forests. The slope is littered with his progeny; he even has saplings down by the lido. Girl trees know he’s a hunter and that he can smell them on the wind. As the sign says, with Stumpy it’s not about being ‘the one’ it’s about being ‘number 1′. And that depends on what mood he’s in.

Suburban Tree likes things nice and neat. No stray branches trailing in a louche manner or scratching on the window-pane at midnight and making people jump. Suburban Tree is clean and crisp as new nets. She can be a bit of a curtain twitcher: see how she’s leaning out towards the street to catch everything that’s going on. Which by the looks of it is not much. No kids playing out as that doesn’t happen any more. No wonder she’s become a little self-obsessed. She stays trim on her very own treadmill which she got for Christmas. A snip at only £399.99 from Argos. 6k every morning just to limber up. Plus pilates every Wednesday evening and Branches, Twigs and Knots on Tuesday afternoons. Suburban Tree was always good at getting into tree-like shapes. She’s saving up for a little bit more work on her trunk. Her aboriculturist is expensive, but one of the best. He flies in from Romania every two months. Privet Bush thinks she’s had too much done and that it’s better to keep it natural. But obviously she’s just jealous. And anyway, leaves are so last year. This season it’s all about silhouette.

Another weird tree. This is Mr Tree Face. He is a tree and a face. Nothing like a theme to underscore the monotony that is inevitably January. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t eat. What do you do apart from pay tax? Yesterday was spent shovelling leaf mulch out the back to make a new flower border in a currently unoccupied territory. Although if you were to try telling the toad that was rather forcefully relocated that the land was ‘unoccupied’ he might have something to say. Having built a bed there I can now call it my own. You know, like the Americans and the Australians on a smaller scale. Not that I’m planning on building the Twin Towers or the Sydney Opera House: just plant a few allium bulbs and a fern or two. I thought the toad was a leaping piece of wood at first. Life without glasses is so much more animated.

Unlike me, Mr Tree Face does not need glasses to watch telly, he has 20/20 vision. He likes to watch Hollyoaks and his favourite restaurant is The Ivy. His favourite dish is Sticky Toffee Pudding. But not in January, because he is currently detoxing. His favourite film is Ed Wood (he is a huge Tim Burton fan, and if Tim were only aware of his existence it would undoubtedly be mutual).

Five nouns from the weekend: nail, plank, foot, plaster, finger.
Five other nouns from the weekend: gargoyle, samurai, cauliflower, liver, cardigan.

I was on my way to the swimming baths in an effort not to be fat like this tree. It’s been there years – well, being a mature tree that would be the case wouldn’t it? It looks like arborial abuse. I took time and stopped to take a picture and spend some time with the fat tree. I’m on deadline, and so now writing about the fat tree has become the most pressing thing on my mind. Why is it fat? Too much junk food due to an unfortunate location on the edge of the common? Discarded KFC boxes gobbled up by clogged roots? You’d think it could get through 5 portions of F&V a day no problem. Not enough exercise? The damn thing LIVES in the park, so that’s no excuse. A genetic propensity? Or perhaps it feels vulnerable and exposed and needs a thick layer of twig stalks round its abdomen to make it feel safe. Or maybe it’s doing a Katharine of Aragon/ Parr: remember that story? The wife who pretended she was pregnant for nine years so Henry VIII didn’t decapitate her for failing to bear a son. I think if the fat tree could sing it would sound like Nina Simone.

Another year ends
and January begins
with best intentions.