Forget pomp and pageantry: mundane anxiety rules in my back garden

In this extraordinary week, the nation has understandably been focused on the upcoming funeral and interment of our dear beloved Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to get something out of the ground that just won’t die.

For years, we’ve had designs on creating a car-parking space at the end of our garden, where it backs onto a quiet road. After a lengthy planning process, much delayed by Covid, we finally got work under way this week, as builders trundled in with digger in tow.

Ahead of their arrival, I had arranged the removal of a fairly hefty ash tree, which regrettably had to go because it was directly on the line of some foundations required for a retaining wall. A tree surgeon had completed the job a couple of months before. Except that it turns out he hadn’t.

I made the discovery of the unremoved stump last Sunday, when I belatedly got round to removing the large mound of wood chippings the arborist had left in situ when he took down the tree. My trowel hit something solidly woody, and my heart sank. I bashed at it half-heartedly in the dusk, to little avail.

When the builders arrived on Wednesday, I confessed to the problem. There was a little sucking of teeth, but they were pretty decent about it, given I’d promised a clear site for them.

Work went smoothly at first as they began to excavate a sizeable trench, but when they reached the stump it would not budge. The one-and-a-half-tonne digger was no match for it; stump and machine fought a mighty battle for what seemed like hours, and the stump had the best of it.

That evening, my son came home from school and surveyed the scene masterfully. “They’ve had trouble with that stump,” he muttered, as we discussed the problem. I asked him if he could perhaps have a go at it, and his eyes lit up until he realised I didn’t mean by using the digger.

Still, he sat in the driver’s seat and imagined himself at the controls, just as I had quietly wanted to when the digger had been brought on site that morning. I spent most of my early childhood thinking that being the driver of a digger or dumper truck was certainly the career for me, and those machines of action still hold a peculiar allure. Perhaps we all have in us a latent building instinct; a throwback to humanity’s earliest times, when the need for shelter was something that couldn’t be outsourced to Taylor Wimpey.

The following morning, the builders arrived early, armed with chainsaw, axe, pick, and newly sharpened spades. They went at that stump with gusto. “Those builders are incredibly strong,” remarked my son, watching keenly from the window as wood chips flew in every direction. I worried for the builders’ eyes.

Walking to school, my son railed at the tree surgeon for leaving us in a pickle; his sympathies were clearly with Rob and Dave as they struggled against the stump. We’d popped out to chat to the builders after breakfast, and they’d asked my son if he fancied being a builder when he grew up. “Maybe,” he’d replied non-committally. “Hopefully,” I thought, thinking of the diggers he could let me have a go on.

By the time I got back from the school run, there was silence in the garden, and I half-wondered if they’d decided to give it up. But when I went to investigate, lo and behold, there was the stump – a monster – finally uprooted in its enormous entirety, now lolling in the trench next to two knackered builders. I brought them cups of tea and apologised – for the fourth or fifth time – for having presented them with this unexpected challenge.

It’s been a monumental week for Britain. But life, with all its minor peculiarities and vagaries, goes on just the same. Hurdles appear and are overcome; anxieties rise and fall. We must never allow ourselves to be stumped for long.