In about 1982 three elm trees died in my Cambridgeshire garden. I marked pieces for sculpture before the dead trees were felled.
One large bole was turned into two clasping lovers.
A friend saw them and asked if he might see the "action" parts, which I had omitted to carve, but then did (and added a little colour for the fun of it).
The next time he came around I said that it would now cost him a pint of beer to have a look. "Good God," he said when he looked at it. "That's worth a bottle of whisky".
The piece was always housed in the open, mainly because of its size.
It came to my London garden in 1992, where it deteriorated to become the home of mice, insects and internal wet rot.
I was all for letting it return to nature as dust, but Margreet wanted me to restore it, which was just possible using thick dowel rods, waterproof glue, wood preservative, gauze, plaster, and black roofing solution. The "action" part of the sculpture had rotted away well before this restoration work.
In 2021, after heaven knows how much restoring work, it started to subside, sinking slowly toward the ground. The lovers' lives had sadly come to their irreparable end.
What was left had to go.
Although enormous, but fairly hollow, I managed to hammer and pull it apart, enough to dispose of it.
I contacted the Council, who asked for a photograph of the pieces. This we sent, with next to them a 96-year-old with hammer in hand. They enjoyed the depiction of my efforts and, for a small sum, took the pieces to toss them into the rear of a rubbish vehicle - which made a good crunching noise as it consumed the wood.
So the sculpture would, in the end, have finished up as dust.
After giving much pleasure during its lifetime, it returned to nature.
