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My WordTree: http://mywordtree.wordpress.com My WordTree is a short blog about seven words and their secret and surprising lives. The Seven Words, are picked out from the first post by Eve and continue a tale of exile and restoration. Like all words they form a beautiful fruit; when you peel back their first layer, there is always another delicious twist of meaning contained within. No wonder Eve loves them ;-) Each Word can be read on its own with many of its meanings contained within, but they also link together to form a complete story. The WordTree Posts are in chronological order and numbered. However if you want to read just an individual word post, please select from the category menu on the left. A brief description about the links will display if you hover your mouse over any menu item. Finally, for all my friends who are agog at this account of my secret and surprising lovers - 'I' is not me! The garden descriptions are real and Elworth Hall did exist once - long ago. The name Elworth Hall triggered musing on the word Ell and then more words followed. The rest is fiction...
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Thank you for reading this blog - please feel free to leave comments. Alternatively you can email me at the address shown on the top of this page. Written and Produced by SarahNet Ltd. sarah@sarahnet.com
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'Beginning' - a hopeful word, often associated with new life or starting again. Well there he sits, my little monk: writing my story. He is getting it all wrong. For generations I have been trying to tell him, but he can't hear me - I realise that now. I will begin again with a different audience. I will begin again with you. Thank you for listening. Please help yourself to fruit. In the beginning Lilith did the right thing. She took one look at His grand design and told God it could not work. As a project it was badly planned and, as a program manager, God really needed to think through the structure, re-code and talk to His project team more. Did He listen? Did He bugger! Utterly disillusioned by God and an inadequate Adam, Lilith left. God is not one to forgive and once His PR had finished with her, she was in darkness and shrouds. God had to begin again. He'd got Adam as some kind of rookie contractor, but Adam wasn't working. Well he couldn't could he? He hadn't got any kind of tools to work with. As he said to me often enough, it's all very well naming the beasts of the field and the birds of the air - but if you haven't got any knowledge or proper nouns, how can you? So - after much moaning and groaning about not getting the staff - God makes me. Even then He creates me on the cheap, robbing Adam of his rib after drugging him. We didn't get on when we met, Adam and me. I was sick of his dusty little features within five minutes and when he tried to explain God's plan I almost lost the will to live. Apparently, God made the world in a rush to meet some unrealistic deadline. Consequently, He hadn’t got round to naming anything. God wanted Adam to do it - and, as I may have mentioned before, Adam hadn't got the first idea.
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In the beginning of the day, I walked through Paradise and found a Tree of Knowledge: a WordTree flowering with far more interesting designs than either God or Adam had ever imagined. Imported in from elsewhere I suspect.New Technology . I believe Lilith was behind that strange tree - despite everything, she had managed to graft on it some rebellious, independent code. I look for her often in all my gardens, but have yet to uncover her. The marvellous tree grew names and words and systems. I realised! Here was the solution to our cataloguing problem. It was simple and elegant. At the WordTree's roots, I found the snake. The snake was one ell long, the snake was a gamekeeper, we played games that were skilful and full of fun. It was from him I learnt about Lilith - as God, of course, never could write-up his projects properly. By late afternoon, the snake and I had indexed everything and I had become a designer! Adam looked simply divine in couture. Honestly by the evening, with everything in order, we all thought God would be pleased. Hindsight is a marvellous thing. Now - it seems obvious that God, being the character He is, would be furious. And He was. Yelling. Shouting - clearly making up rules as he went along. I asked if He had got anything in writing from any of us agreeing to His ridiculous Tree Health and Safety Policy. I stood in the Tree's shadow and the words just came to me Of course He hadn't. Nor could He explain if the Tree was so dangerous, what exactly it was doing in Eden's walled sanctuary. Then I saw jealousy possess the Lord our God and he turned on the snake with venom and cut off its legs. I could see, alas, life beginning to ebb from the poor creature and in a panic I picked him up and pressed him into Adam’s lap for warmth. The snake took root, stuck and in time became a fair exchange for a missing rib. Since then, I have always preferred earthy men. Adam and I fled from the mad Gardener. We would not return, nor did we want to but all the same there was no ending to His complaints.
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Frankly, I think God became so upset because he can neither read, write nor communicate. I know in his autobiography, (part two) He claimed to be The Word, but I don't believe it. He dictated his book rather than wrote it. Speaks volumes! If you read his book, it's a chaos of rewriting, crossings out and false starts: a very poor example of the author as God. As far as I can tell, none of His project information documents ever remained in place for long. Because - as I argued originally - they were rushed and incomprehensible. Nobody understood what they were signing up to. People would read them and start to argue. He is always trying to begin again, new people, new laws, new languages even, poor God. God accused me of all types of crimes - ask the monk, but oddly, the one thing I did take - a seed from the WordTree, He never mentioned. In time, I sowed the Tree in all the gardens I ever found. Sometimes to amuse myself, I sit under its branches, pick off its fruit at random, pare down the words and string together odd stories. Like this one :-)
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'ELL' - a measuring word - & naughty Mr. Shakespeare All the best families have secrets and the very best have houses big enough to hide them in. To escape from the blitz, my mother was sent to the family home of Elworth Hall, where enigmas scampered alongside the rats in the wainscoting. People took to their beds in that house - or disappeared. London and its bombs would have been kinder.
Ell - an obsolete unit of length, approximately 45 inches. O/E : eln - forearm (the measure being from forearm to finger tips)Shakespeare liked ELL and he used it as a slang term for penis in Romeo and Juliet. It was Shakespeare who first used the word ELBOW. What was he thinking? The farmers at Elworth Hall grew secrets by surveying up and parcelling out land, making sure only the right ell was used to plant crops. They grew women who were not domestic, who challenged the ell's length, who found it could be much bigger than originally thought. The women of Elworth Hall grafted on new genetic stock. A measure for measure if you like. My Grandmother, not called Eleanor but Nell haha, got caught. As a young girl she found a good measure of a man - William. He lacked no thing - but land. Willy Lackland indeed. Reader, she married him. Reader, her father disinherited her. In his Shakespearian will, he left her nothing but the second best Grandfather Clock that had stood in the kitchen for years out of memory. That ruthless timepiece despatches the hours in unalterable, measured degrees.
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Nell and her new husband moved to Ruislip taking my mother and the secrets with her. Even in the tiny 1930s suburban house that was universally scorned, there was room for those. My mother, when she grew up, tried to leave them behind. She buried them 45inches deep in her mind and tried to conform. She tried to be domestic. She tried so hard, but the trying made her ill. The trying killed her. Although my house is clean, I am not domestic. I have secrets - I am not trying. If I had daughters, they would be wild as seeds. When my great-grandfather died, Elworth Hall burnt down.
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'SHROUD' - a hidden word, can also be tied up in knots. My great-grandfather died and his good deeds lie quietly. In all the family archives, memoirs and stories, I have found neither one scrap nor shred of anyone remembering his kindness kindly. He is dead and Elworth Hall lies in ashes, shrouded by earth. The grandfather clock reminds me. Time has moved on. Another place calls me. I love my cottage but I am seduced by houses as by lovers. Houses greet me and some speak. I can sit in a house quietly and hear its voice. These are not ghosts, I think, but sometimes I am not so sure. Salt Marsh House stands at the edge of a wasteland, threaded by golden grasses. Strange birds flap through them, disturbing the seeds that flow freely into the gardens and set rebellious fruits. From the roofs, on the far horizon you can just glimpse the sea and sails. The mists stroll in from the marshes and shroud the house, protecting it from prying eyes, supporting those who wish to enter and leave without being seen. I am summoned to Salt Marsh House, where my dear friend lies dying. I run along one of the few firm tracks that wind from the town, through the marshes to the great house and I am shown into her peaceful room. We have to say good-bye, but I don't want to. "Don't go," I plead silently - she who has been our mainstay for so many years. "Stay longer." Choiceless, she ties her Shroud Knot and checks the main sails. She unfurls them and casts off, the firm tracks disappear in her wake. When I next see her, her frail body is covered by a linen cloth: shrouded in mystery. She left behind a household desolate and more lost than we could yet know.
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'SEDUCE' - a tempting word - should be used with care: not altogether to be trusted. Too much death, I think. That's enough misery - drifting round impractical, damp mansions - wondering what's on earth is going on. No one knows what's going on. The only answer is to party hard. I think we should cheer up. I hear you laughing - you think I should cheer up. I think you may be right. These things make me smile: Lovers and Humour. In my opinion, they should be enjoyed together. But only one lover at a time is my recommendation - otherwise you will fall into Dangerous Liaisons. I will find you running mad in Country Houses for a change, only this time in crinolines and corsets. How highly uncomfortable and impractical. How will I be able to penetrate all those petticoats to discern what is going on and write it down? What we need now is a joke. Here it is: Q. What do you call a paranoid dinosaur? A. Doyouthynkhesaurus A potential lover hove into view the other week. He was speaking of his Admirable Bed. Then I realised I had mis-heard him and he is not a potential lover at all. He was talking of his Admiral's bed. I have no idea what an Admiral's bed is - but part of me very much wants to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, I remember. I will have to cast him off before I start. Admiral Lord Nelson's bed was also his coffin and we could too quickly become entangled in shrouds. (So many bodies, so little time).
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Reasons to be cheerful: Lovers and humour: as mentioned before admirable reasons - but it has to be said that lovers don't altogether like it if you start giggling too much. They can turn dinosaur and paranoid: Isitdinkysaurus. My lovers grow nervous, they don't want to be written off - they don't want to be written of. Particularly when I write in this mood. When I could illuminate their bodies to improve a page. fix them for ever in an artificial posture for fun. I think of them naked and vulnerable in bed, I think of me naked and vulnerable in bed. "Write anything you like," emails my true love, "but for GOD's sake, don't write about me. LOL x" Another, whom I have not seen in a while, is in a sulk and moaning in his bed (for all the wrong reasons). The reason? He is jealous. Dear reader, he too is writing a book. The snake in the garden was more generous than he. The snake shared his fruit. But my lover thinks that because I am writing, I am stealing his words. Every time I commit a stroke of black ink to a white page, I am taking away precious letters from his tome - the worst kind of succubus. The WordTree is full of fruit I want to say. But I can't, as his bitterness renders me silent and positively illiterate. The WordTree's words are infinite and evergreen. It's a generous tree that produces the sweetest lexicons for all seasons. No word I pluck from the tree will deprive another of its use. Reader, I love my lovers I will not write of them. I will write of the ones that got away - the not lovers.
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For this we have to return to vanished Elworth Hall . A summer's walk in its meadows and the great chalk rivers that run clear to the sea. Hidden by the bulrushes and the sweeping golden grasses I take off all my clothes, I slip into the waters and swim, pale as a fish. I slip up river and then return to the hidden bank. I wade to the earthy shore. In the clay stands a man. His clothes as green as the river, eyeing me with hunter's eyes. I recognise him. He is the gamekeeper and there are certain games - I can tell - that he very much wants to play.
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'GAMEKEEPER' - an upstart word: now considered sexy. Before that, it lined things up to be shot. Southampton: a sprawling port town that is somehow strangely detached from the sea. It is possible to live in the suburb of Shirley and never become aware of the ships that sail into the city's heart. Shirley is a bustle of a place, alive with discount shops, bargain hunters, numerous languages from Chinese to Romanian. Polish is the predominant one; the once empty Catholic Church thrives again. A brothel runs its business discretely two doors down from where I live - but not quite quietly enough. My elderly neighbour is alive with gossip, her sharp little face pokes over the garden fence to update me. "Man knocked my door for his 3 o' clock massage. I gave him what for I can tell you... Madam turned up later with flowers. Flowers! - but I knew what she was - soon as I sees her." I bet she did, I think to myself as I listen. Takes one to know one. The sentence in my mind rings clear as a bell, and her next words lend credence to my uncharitable thoughts. "Always fancied running a fine house. I'd look after my girls, make sure they were safe." My neighbour leans on the fence with a sigh. "Such a shame getting old. I miss my nights. All the games I know - going to waste." I don't have too much sympathy. She is seventy - her husband twenty years younger. It can't be all bad. Shirley is not usually the place to find a gamekeeper, but nevertheless at this time one can be found. Unbeknownst to me, there is a to-do in Romsey. It is its turn to host a major game fair. Every gamekeeper across the country wants to stay. Soon there is not a hotel or B&B to be had for miles around. Deep in the countryside, the descendents of Elworth Hall, pause. They remember a scattered seed, a lost daughter and her line. The vanished house
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passes my details onto a distant cousin. The delicate threads, believed broken for so long, stir and start to re-tie broken bonds: shroud like. Perhaps I can help? Perhaps I can - and rather surprisingly for me, as I guard my privacy so carefully - perhaps I will. I ensure that all my work's deadlines are up-to-date and cleared in good time. I agree to take the gamekeeper and my unknown relative. In return I get a ticket to the fair. I am briefed about the gamekeeper. He spent too much time out-of-doors, on the wet moors and consequently suffers terribly from arthritis. Some days he can hardly move. He has to be kept warm. He must not eat sugar or it all flares up. I build a very clear picture of him, hobbling with a stick, relying on his dogs to run after anything for him. Sometimes they practically have to hold the gun and shoot for him. I add white hair under his keeper's cap. I wonder vaguely if he will require grab rails around the toilet. They find me easily enough, flanked by the Catholic Church on one side and prostitutes on the other. I no longer live in Shirley, but I can tell you now on the doorstep of my old house there is still a mark where my jaw hit the ground. The word to describe the gamekeeper is FIT. Mid forties, tanned brown as a hazel nut: a quality of stillness in his face that belies his sharply observant green eyes. He springs across the threshold and kisses me. He too seems pleasantly surprised. I wonder how my cousin described me." Why's there a copper hiding in the next garden,� he asks. Sure enough behind him, I glimpse the head and shoulders of a man peeking over a hedge. I explain about the brothel and the surveillance that now surrounds it. The gamekeeper is amazed at the inept stalking methods shown by our local constabulary. "No way to catch birds," he mutters."No way at all. Got any biscuits?"
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'DEADLINES' - always a grim word, generally unreasonable: i.e. exam schedules We sat out together in my small city garden; the gamekeeper whose name is Adam, me and my long-lost cousin. My cousin wandered away down the garden's length to discover the pond at its end. My garden is 20 Ells long and full of seeds. The garden is warm in the Summer's evening, fragrant and packed with roses. Flowering Elecampane sings of Helen of Troy. She who was kidnapped by Paris when she was gathering this golden herb. There are no deadlines for these plants. They cross barriers at will. No forbidden fruits. No mark in the sand that maps a fatal boundary. All thrives, all looks set to continue. In the corner a witch hazel sits quietly waiting for late winter. Then she will set out flowers like tiny suns, promising spring - ending the darkness. Remembering that evening, it seems that the garden was never more beautiful. The wild flowers and the herb collection were in full bloom - each with their own stories, medicinal, mythological or linked to the gods. Although I did not know it I had sown a word tree and it was beginning to grow. Adam understood the garden and named the plants. This was Sweet Cecily, here is Angelica protecting against demons and arthritis. "You must take some home," I say smiling. "To protect you and your bones." Adam smiles back. Then he reaches out and caresses the back of my neck with one tender and delicate stroke that sweeps down to the base of my spine.
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In that instant I know our bodies have reached an ancient, unspoken agreement. But sitting in that summer's garden we had the world but no time. The evening was slipping away. Tomorrow's fair was a deadline that could not be postponed for other games. My cousin walks through the garden towards us. "It’s full of frogs," he says, genuinely amazed by the city's habitat. But it's not in the pond that I need look for princes in disguise. I stand up to go into the kitchen to make some coffee. "Make it instant," says Adam,� - none of that waiting around for filtered�
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'ENDINGS' - a curious word: generally thought to be happy - but may not in fact exist.
'ENDINGS' - a curious word: generally thought to be happy - but may not in fact exist. Endings were easy I thought. I truly believed I could finish a chapter and turn over a new leaf from the WordTree and begin again. I have another garden now, with richer soil and altered character. Yet I could not forget my history and its seeds: the plants came as so many stow-aways from Southampton. Their progeny jumped ship into as many pots as I could carry away. The WordTree too moved with me though it now chooses the house to flourish in, scratching me with its twigs, invading the soft sofa - the tree's fruit and its fragrance pervading my dreams. Mauve coloured Shirley Poppies run laughing through the garden, rattling their full seed heads at me as I pass. But I never grew their cousin's bloodied field flower nor scarlet roses I sometimes think that never blows so red, The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; - as the poet had it. Secretly I am glad; for now I question the endless Gardens of Remembrance. I think we need Gardens of Forgetfulness and in forgetting, renew ourselves. A clock strikes - my great grandfather's clock sending a jar through a fresh summer's day. I have forgotten to tell you the end of the story. I must hurry for soon I will forget. I can't explain how this has happened but I am writing to you from Elworth Hall. I can see the wainscoting and hear the rats whispering. There is some kind of House Party going on. I always think it's wrong for houses to party. People should party, but in my experience most people don't know how. They clutch a solitary wine glass and huddle near the walls.
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They have miserable conversations - listen, I can hear one taking place now."
How is your dear mother?" an elderly woman is asking a man in his fifties. He takes a sip from his wine-glass and replies moodily, "She died on Tuesday last." The man's wife, a trim piece in her late forties - gathers up the reins of the conversation that her husband entirely drops. She canters on. "But we can't bury her until the second week in August simply too difficult. The entire family is booked for an evening at the theatre on the day the Funeral Director proposed for the funeral. Simply not going to cancel - we are all so looking forward to the play." A bad ending? Or a sad one? I have had enough and flee into a back kitchen that is mercifully empty. My mother stood here once, looking out of the window, watching while a haystack burnt violently in the night. In the darkness, I can see her and the flames that this time did not destroy the house. I completely understand why my grandmother chose exile in Ruislip. I pour myself another glass of wine and lean again the range, where some filter coffee has been prepared: it is starting its slow journey through coarse paper, trickling into the pot. Suddenly there is a knock at the back door. When I open it, I find Adam the gamekeeper, as I first imagined him: stooped, white-haired, leaning on sticks. I too am grown old. But our faces light up on seeing each other and we hug. "Heard you were here," Adam says."Thought I would find you in the kitchen - you were never one for company." His bird catching skills appear unabated. Once settled in the kitchen, his news is hard. The arthritis gnaws at his bones. But as we talk the years slip away. He seems younger. I reach for a bottle of wine and offer him a drink. He shakes his head and asks for coffee. As I glance toward the jug on the range, he interjects firmly. "Instant coffee mind – none of that waiting around for filtered."
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Immediately we regain the garden and sit once again under the flowering WordTree in a summer's evening. Once more we are not alone. The WordTree has grown a poet - who blossoms and writes: A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, -- and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness -Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! I can see now how mistaken my grandfather's clock is . It ticks off the seconds in measured, unforgiving steps from the cradle to the grave. Whereas Time spirals around us in great coils. Words slide through them with the snake, passing down the generations resonating; combining the future and the past with an eternal present. The WordTree: its roots and its branches embracing us all.