(Or - Why don't we carve our initials into trees anymore?)
There's graffiti and then there's 'love' graffiti. One involves spraying your 'tag' onto a train or bus shelter - generally in a form so incomprehensible it makes the whole 'this is me, know me, love me' part of graffiti all but non-existent. Love graffiti is simple. It has only one purpose. To tell our love that we love them. And the best way to do that, as everyone knows, is with a penknife.
Look at that photo. Gorgeous.
I imagine that Rodney, while pondering his love for Edna, saw Cupid's hand at work when he discovered this tree, and its ready-made heart just screaming out for their initials.
And they're still there, after all these years.
I imagine Edna is now married to a bank manager. A decent chap who provides in every room of the house but the bedroom.
But at least he's a better man than Rodney, who she fell out with the very day he took her to see this romantic gesture. Excited by the idea of a teenage boy with a non-violent knife, she no doubt urged him to draw his own blood to paint into their carved initials and thus true love would be forever guaranteed.
Unfortunately, after all that scraping on tree bark, Rodney's blade was forever dulled and his palm produced forth nothing more than a pink line - as deeply erotic as dragging a tennis ball across your skin. Edna deserved more and dumped him at once.
Now, when she takes the family's French Bulldog, 'Chien', out for his walk, she encourages him to do his business at the foot of the offending tree. For a moment it makes her feel something. She isn't sure what. Then, no matter how she feels about Rodney, she bags the dog's unpleasant offering - because she's a good dog owner and doesn't want a £100 fine. Further up the path, when she's sure no one is looking, she flings the bag of poop into the trees at the side of the old train line where her walk takes place. Ah, how she loves the great outdoors.
Occasionally, Rodney walks along the path on a sort of personal carving trail. First there's Edna's tree. He marvels at the heart the tree offered him without even asking. Then a couple of hundreds yards on is a tree carved with R+J. Ah, Jocelyn. He rather liked the Shakespearian lettering. As the years have gone by he likes less that the vaguely heart shaped notch in this second tree has turning into something unmistakably vagina-y. It's nature's handiwork, but all the same he feels a responsibility that his deeply felt love for Jocelyn (all four and a half weeks of it) is now represented by an image that diminishes the purity of that time.
Further down the path, through the 'poo bag' trees, he smiles at the carved memories of Bethany, Linda and Georgina. Although the latter's initial was almost impossible to carve and now seems to report that R loved a tarantula recently hit with a spade.
Like Rodney, back in the day we all knew that there was no greater expression of love than carved initials in a somewhat heart-shaped anomaly in the trunk of a tree. But somewhere, since Rodney's glory days, we have forgotten to extol the importance of this public love expression to our children.
Perhaps it's because we live in a post-penknife world? Or a post tree-harm world? Or possibly because the idea of romantic gestures is a thing of the past? My eldest son recently discovered girls and cider. I'm not sure which came first but one seems to encourage the other. I wonder if he will ever feel the need to do something that takes the best part of an hour in a forest, when he could achieve the same outcome with a sharpie on a lamppost in a matter of seconds.
Love deserves more than a lamppost. It deserves more than just the consideration of a dog owner waiting for their pooch to cock its leg. Because teenage love is as painful and confusing as it is beautiful and life-affirming, and a lamppost is merely an outside loo for animals that sniff each other's bottoms by way of a greeting! It's why Shakespeare never etched a sonnet onto the side of a port-a-loo in the middle of a field.
The heartbreak of love often lasts much longer than the actual good bit. But a heart scratched into an oak tree is forever.
No doubt the virtual/internet/pornhub world is to blame. Reality is something now only to be experienced during a power cut or when our phones have been stolen. Love needs to be more than a 30 second TikTok, or a 140 character tweet, or a Facebook photo of our dinner with the word 'this' above it.
Love should change everything. It should make a young person want to sneak into the family tool shed and steal the best version of a penknife they can find. It should make them want to select the right tree, a tree they feel befits the enduring emotion that consumes them - hopefully with Mother Nature's own heart already emblazon there, or at the very least, a tree devoid of markings that look like nobs or lady-parts.
Steal the knife. Select the trunk. Partake in a game of 'oh shit, was that the sound of someone coming?' Then etch the initial of the person who makes your heart pound louder than anything in the world. Then, my friend, you are experiencing love as it was intended to be experienced. And what, in a world so full of nonsense, could be better than that?
Disclaimer: please check with local council regulations regarding the defacing of woody, perennial plants and also police laws about knife carrying; and the general welfare of your selected tree, before doing anything. And I mean - anything. Love might well be all consuming but encouraging someone to do a thing that gets any of us in trouble for simple writing (or reading) a blog post, is way more intense. Jesus.
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