Sunday 12 June 2011

Trees

I hate sunlight. My pale, white skin has no resistance, blistering and bubbling at its slightest touch. So I always sit in the shade. But there's shade and there's shade.

On a wooded hill, far from roads and cars, noise and fumes, sitting behind a beer. Life has few greater pleasures. The canopy sucking the heat from the sun's rays, long before they clatter to earth. Odd spots of ochre paint splashing the ground. A bird chattering wall of trees,weaving webs of green, shifting in every breath of breeze.

A forest is so much better cover than some poxy umbrella. It's not just cooler. It's cooler in the other sense, too. So much more right. More natural. More human.

I've lived in cities since I was 18. I enjoy the shops and trams and pubs and buses, the to and fro and hub and bub. Rarely do I trouble the countryside. Rendering the effect all the greater, the odd time I crawl back into its tender, comforting womb.

There's nothing like a real Franconian Bierkeller. Spread under spreading trees, tables reaching like fingers, tenderly touching the trunks. Rough furniture, still half forest, beckoning in drinkers: "Come and sit with me a while."

Of course, there's beer. Long, cool draughts, clad in grey clay pots. Upright, honest country beer. Beer that looks back without flinching, a faithful friend for life. 

I love the city. But my most memorable moments were amongst trees.

8 comments:

Rod said...

Ron - I didn't know you had such poetry in your soul!
I absolutely couldn't agree more with what you say, though - I'm going to be in Bavaria in September, and cannot bloody wait to be under the chestnuts and linden with a Mass in front of me and spit-roast chicken on its way.
Wohl bekomm's!

Andrew Elliott said...

I'd almost say you've been shooting for some kind of literary prize lately...

beer guru, jr. said...

i too enjoy a beer in the wood- in the woods. i will be in rural wisconsin by this time next week, sipping all manner of rare barrel-aged beer from central waters brewery, and o'so brewing, both of portage county in the great cheesehead state. i will hoist a tall cool one to you.

Ron Pattinson said...

Andrew, trying to write from my heart, that's all.

Matt said...

How about a poetry competition?

Andrew Elliott said...

Ron, you're doing a fantastic job of it. Your writing definitely carries me away from this depressingly torrid clime and brings me just about as close as possible to enjoying that beer without actually tasting it -- which I pretty much can as you are tickling my senses with your descriptions. I guess sometimes I give people a bit of a hard time when trying to give props, too. Thanks for the escapes!

Anonymous said...

I have just returned from my own trip to Munich and franconia, and must have been there at the same time as your good self.and my own Nordic red hair and white skin,gained much relief from wonderful Bavarian trees.as in a shady few hours spent in Heide Volm, beer garden just outside Munich last week.

John said...

Lovely post, Ron. Makes me want to be there.