Member-only story
The Old Man Of Higginbottom’s Ditch
The Sally Tree interview
Prompted by an idea from Edger Ai Bington
Winter! I hate winter. My leaves have fallen, the birds don’t sing this time of year, and the sound of distant chainsaws makes me nervous.
Eighty-eight years ago old man Higginbottom cut me off a tree down the field, a gate post I was supposed to be. Huh, who’d want to be a gatepost? He dug a hole, stuck me in it, and hung his gate on me. I didn’t like that. I thought ‘sod him’ I’m supposed to be a tree, so in the spring I put down some roots and pushed up some shoots, and that was it, I was a tree. A few years later, his gate fell off its rusty hinges. That was a great day.
Around 1938 they started laying pipes in the ground and draining the fields. They dug a ditch right by me. That suited me fine. My roots went for the water so fast I nearly fell in. I was the fastest-growing tree on the farm.
They used to come and take my young shoots for baskets, then, as I got older, some of my branches went for cricket bats and some for charcoal. Those were the days. I felt wanted.
When the Second World War came all the young men left the village. It went very quiet around here. All I heard for a few years was birds singing in the spring, and Old Man Higginbottom swearing at his…
