Why do I feel self-conscious about picking up sticks? I don't have these hang-ups about picking blackberries or mushrooms. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m collecting nature's cast-offs rather than her bounty – scavenging rather than harvesting. Or maybe it’s the Wenceslas effect.
The Good King, you will remember, spots ‘a poor man gathering winter fuel’ and heads off after him, his page in tow. That’s about it, really. Whether they make it, and what the peasant thinks about it all, goes unrecorded.
‘Nobody has ever understood why Neale [who wrote the carol in 1853] makes Wenceslas feel impelled to take pine logs to a peasant who already lives next to a forest’ says Telegraph columnist Rupert Christiansen.
I’ll tell you why – for the same reason that my smart neighbours feel impelled to draw their pristine Range Rovers up alongside when I’m wrestling an awkwardly shaped twig into an outsize Sainsbury’s carrier, and ask if I’m okay. Because, like the peasant, I look pathetic grubbing about in the undergrowth, and, like King W, they can’t help interfering.
But, again like the peasant, I would rather be left to my own humble devices. Why do you think he chose to live ‘A good league hence – underneath the mountain’? To avoid being patronised by smug do-gooders like Good King W and his entourage, that’s why.
The idle rich and decadent can buy kindling in elegant little bundles form petrol stations - a bit Marie Antoinette-ish for me. You can also make your own by splitting logs, provided you have a handy hatchet and a strong right arm. I have two hatchets, neither of which are handy for me as my right arm is weak and my aim is dreadful. I’m safer by far grubbing about in the woods for sticks.
Hauling around something larger would be more dignified, of course, and more profitable. The woods round here are full of fallen branches, just perfect for a poor man’s winter fuel. But they’re always miles from the car and too hefty to carry. There’s also the question of legality. Stick-gathering counts as foraging: dragging whole chunks of tree about looks rather too much like theft. 
So I stick to kindling. But I always end up tired, dirty, self-pitying and with comparatively little to show for it. I haul my haul back to my dwelling, and if I’m lucky there’s no Good King on the doorstep with a Boxing Day picnic and a dinky sledge full of hand-split pine logs to belittle all my efforts.
I can settle down, kindle a fire in the woodburner, and enjoy St Stephens Day in peace, knowing that I’m probably going to have to go through the whole business all over again before New Year.
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St Stephen's Day is Boxing Day, 26th December. St Stephen is the Patron Saint of Hungary, stone-masons, left-over turkey and hangovers.
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Yet again, a wonderful and timely piece. So amusing, thought provoking and so very well written. I like your illustrations too. They do the job perfectly.
ReplyDeleteHow about contacting a magazine like Smallholder (I mention that because the Editor, Liz Wright, is also the commissioning editor and, I think, the sub-editor....so you are not dealing with ranks of people to get through to the 'right person') and have a natter about your 'country diaries as something she might like to print in each edition. They need to see the light of day. Either drive traffic to your blog or get them out there in print!!