Nature Poem

I chanced upon this in my reading, and was very struck by it. If you don’t recognise it, you might think it written by Basil Bunting, perhaps, or Alice Oswald. It’s not, though. It’s from the first of Barbara Euphan Todd’s Worzel Gummidge books: Worzel Gummidge, or The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook (1936).

“Gummidge isn’t a very pretty name,”’ objected Susan.

“No,” he replied. “It’s as ugly as I am.” Susan looked at him. His hat was awry over his turnipy face … “Gummidge isn’t pretty,” she said, “but it’s a very interesting name.”

“Ooh aye!’ he agreed. ‘But then, I’ve a power of things to interest me — roots tickling and shooting, rooks lifting in the wind, rabbits here, there, and scattered in a minute. Give over now, do!” This last remark was made to the cock robin, who was pecking at his greenly-bearded chin.

“How old are you?” asked Susan.

“All manner of ages,” replied the scarecrow. “My face is one age, and my feet are another, and my arms are the oldest of all.”

“How very, very queer,” said Susan. [ch 2]

Never having read this book (though I watched the Jon Pertwee TV show as a kid, and saw some of the Mackenzie Crook reboot, more recently) I recently picked it up. What struck me is that, as well as being funny and charming (as are those two adaptations, in their different ways) Todd’s novel has real depth and eeriness, and some really beautiful descriptive writing. How many contemporary bestselling children’s authors can unostentatiously drop-in writing as fine as this? David Walliams couldn’t, if his life depended on it.