A study will be conducted to explore avenues for restoration, future-proofing and possibly even relocation. Let’s hope this funding injection saves Willow Man from his sad and sparse state and ensures his enigmatic watch over Somerset can continue.

But in November 2023 Somerset Council announced it is set to receive £35,000 from the National Highways’ Designated Funding programme to begin looking at a feasible way forward.

Despite a reported £20,000 hair cut in 2006, mostly to replace material the birds had taken for their nests, the wicker giant began steadily to fall into disrepair. A 2018 appeal for funding did not meet its target and by 2021 the head and both arms had fallen off.

Since then it has suffered both desecration and neglect. The first iteration was the victim of an arson attack in 2001 and had to be rebuilt inside a large protective moat.

Somerset Levels. Locally it became known as both Withy Man and the Angel of the South. The wicker also provided a novel habitat for Somerset’s native bird species, becoming itself a part of the county’s ecology.

The Willow Man, a once great giant bestriding a field in Somerset, glimpsed by motorists on the M5 and rail travellers between Bristol and Exeter, has in recent years fallen in stature. Could 2024 be the year he is made majestic once more?

So much so that many parents sign up their children to the decades-long waiting list of volunteers, so that one day they might have the opportunity to be pelted with root vegetables.

The reenactment of that night has been played out every year for over a century.

Local legend has it that a thief snuck in to the village one night to relieve the ranchers of their animals, but didn’t reckon on the might and ingenuity of the townsfolk, who used everything to hand - mainly turnips - to fend off the thief.

Next day’s bruises must be about as colourful as the costume.

This villain, played by a lucky volunteer, runs around the 1,200-strong town banging a little drum while local people throw turnips at him in an attempt to expel his general bad vibes for another year. Two tonnes of turnips if you want the specifics.

The focus of events is the costumed ‘cattle rustler’ named el Jarrampla, who wears a cloak of multicoloured rags and is adorned with a great horned mask.

Lighten the dry Jan blues by visiting the Jarramplas Festival, which takes place in Piornal, in the Spanish region of Extremadura every year on 19-20th January. As well as being a sight to behold it is also BYOT (bring your own turnip).

Eventually they adapted to live with almost no oxygen. Instead the microbes respire sulphate with ferric ions, metabolising trace levels of organic matter trapped with them.

In 2017 scientists finally figured out the strange phenomenon. A team or researchers led by the University of Alaska concluded that the red colouring is due to oxidised iron in hypersaline water from an ancient lake under the ice, similar to the usually dry process of rust.

Ok fine, no. Blood Falls was discovered in an area called the Taylor Glacier in Victoria Land, East Antarctica in 1911. Though a red sputtering gouge would have been the last thing they could expect among the vista of blue-white and must have come as quite a shock,

Happy new year, the Antarctic is bleeding. There’s a wound in Antarctica pouring blood into a waterfall the height of a five-storey building.

It’s out! The Bleeding Tree is OUT NOW in hardback and ebook! Amazing sentence to be able to type: get your copy now online or in all good bookshops!

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