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Saturday 22 November 2008

The Spectator's notes

The Spectator's notes

Charles Moore on the events of the week

On the night of the Great Storm, a Friday, we were on the sleeper to Scotland, and so, for the worst was in the south, we missed it. That Sunday, we attended morning service at a Presbyterian church near Loch Rannoch. It was like an Ealing comedy parody of Scottishness. The minister invited us to pray for ‘the folks down south who were not insured’ in the hurricane. As an afterthought, he suggested that we might also remember those who had died.

I have always loved trees, and may even, occasionally, have hugged them when no one was looking. But only recently have I developed much interest in knowing about them. A new book by Will Cohu, Out of the Woods: The armchair guide to trees (Short Books) is well designed for people in my condition (though I wish its illustrations were more comprehensive). Cohu argues that it is best to see trees in winter: ‘For, as with the human body, the external form of a tree is shaped by its skeleton and thinking about the latter is a help to knowing the former. Naked trees are in many cases more articulate and interesting than are trees in their cabbage-like summer forms.’ It is an arresting thought. So winter woods are one great array of nudity, and we who walk in them are like art students at a life class. I shall tread more carefully.

Steve, a retired farm labourer and our neighbour, died last week. He was almost the last veteran of the second world war in our village. I asked him once if he had liked being in the army. (He served in North Africa.) ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You would have been mad not to like it.’ He and his comrades set up an excellent little local society which collected memorabilia, photographs, bits of shot-down Messerschmidts, etc. Steve was a pacific man. It is interesting, but not at all unusual, that such gentle people found uncomplicated happiness in soldiering. Strange, but true, that the war made young men unaggressive after it, and that the absence of war makes them so much more violent today.

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