Tag Archives: Roger Deakin

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin

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Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin was published in 2008. It’s a selection of his diary entries/research notes and thoughts which had been written over several years, compiled into one year. This book is a sort of homage to Deakin I suppose, he died quite suddenly and his friends were obviously bereft, this was a way of hearing more from him.

You get a real flavour of what Deakin was like and the way he lived his life, which seems to have been idyllic. He had lived in an ancient Suffolk farm for the last 30 years of his life, wild swimming in the moat, in fact he apparently popularised the modern interest in wild swimming. I got the impression though that the moat was more of a ditch, a common feature of East Anglian fields.

As you would expect, some entries are more interesting than others. Some are strange such as his observation that mallard ducks ‘seem incapable of ordinary fonder bird-love. With them it has to be a violent chase, wild pursuit, followed by an unceremonius ducking of the object of desire and a gang-bang.’

Well there’s a very simple reason for that as for some reason there are always far more male mallards than females, which he doesn’t seem to have noticed. In fact things are often made even worse as female mallards are sometimes drowned in the melee.

Unusually for an environmentalist Deakin was a big fan of cats, I suppose they were good company for him but they must have devastated the local bird population. He was quite againts dogs, reasoning that anyone taking a dog for a walk in the country was unlikely to see much in the way of wildlife, as dogs scared everything away,  they certainly scare rabbits away.

The blurb on the front says: ‘Marvellous, wonderful, lovely, remarkable ….. to be read and reread and treasured.’ Elizabeth Jane Howard

I borrowed this one from my local library.

Wildwood A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin

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I love trees, in fact I’m a bit of a tree hugger, so when Margaret @BooksPlease reviewed this book and I realised that my local library had it I thought I would give it a go. Apart from anything else I’m trying to read non-fiction in a more structured way instead of the dipping in and out of the books which I’ve often done in the past, it means I rarely finish the entire book, whatever the subject.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book but I only gave it a 3 on Goodreads, mainly because I felt that some of the chapters were probably there just because the publishers had asked for a book of about 400 pages, or however many words that translates into. There were some parts of the book which had very tenuous links to the woods, trees or nature, and those parts weren’t so interesting, to me anyway.

I learned quite a lot of interesting things though, such as the fact that those half-timbered English houses that I’m always taking photos of because they look as if they are about to fall down, have probably been as twisted as they are almost from the beginning of their ‘life’. Apparently they used green oak which twisted as it dried and made the structure stronger.

I now understand how walnut veneer is produced and why it is so expensive. The best place to see Green Man carvings seems to be Devon and willows grown in the south of England, particularly Essex and Suffolk are best for cricket bats, much to the disgust of the Australians.

An interesting snippet is the fact that Jarvis Cocker is the nephew of Joe Cocker, that was news to me and it gives you an idea of the eclectic nature of this book. Some artists who work with wood are mentioned, such as David Nash. Actually for some reason I could feel my ears go a bit pale when I read about some of his treatment of living wood to make his sculptures. I don’t know why the thought of him cutting most of the way through tree limbs and twisting them seems like a ghastly occupation to me but it does. On the other hand I don’t feel the same way about the same process being carried out by hedge-layers, in fact I would probably be quite happy to give that a go myself, and I’m very tender hearted when it comes to plants.

Anyway, as I said, I did enjoy this book, in parts. I’ve always fancied living in a cottage in a glade in a wee wood, just far enough away from trees so that there is no danger of being squashed by falling trees, and it sounds like Roger Deakin was lucky enough to live out this dream in his life. Sadly he died just before this book was published.

You can see some images of David Nash’s work here.

I didn’t know about the artist Mary Newcomb who is also mentioned, you can see some of her lovely work here.