An Epicormic Easter Sermon

 

'Go! Tell them the Cross is a Tree again, and they 

may eat the fruit if they can reach the branches.'

 

 

I. 

 

If you ask your local council why it is that they savagely pollard the remaining large trees each spring, they will tell you it's for a variety of reasons; mostly related to issues of public health and safety and the protection of property, although often they claim it's in order to protect the trees themselves from disease. 

 

But I think we all know that this is mostly to disguise the real agenda; namely, to discourage birds from nesting and, ultimately, to remove the trees altogether and thereby save the money that would otherwise be spent on their management. The potential hazard posed by large trees is massively exaggerated (I have lived in Essex for many years and have never yet been injured by a falling branch).  

  

II.

 

Let's back this up with some data, shall we ...

 

The London Borough of Havering, which happens to be my local authority - one which last year had to secure £54 million in central government support to avoid going bankrupt and who earlier this year accepted another £88 million bailout loan as their dire financial state worsened - has seen the biggest reduction in tree cover of any London borough in the last seven years (this according to a recent report for the GLA).       

 

In 2018, Havering had 25% tree coverage (above the London average); but by 2024 it had fallen to just 14% (below the London average). The fact that in December 2023 the Council accidently cut down 4,000 young trees at Harrow Lodge Park planted by volunteers - along with a number of more mature treees and five holly bushes - didn't help.   

 

Havering Council, however, claim they do not recognise the data in this report and say that there has been no net loss of trees in the last ten years on council land ... And maybe that's so; but the big loss, of course, is of trees that once stood on private land as more and more people cut them down in order to build on or simply pave over what were once gardens.

Thus, it's not simply the Council who are to blame for the degreening of Havering. A large number of residents - many of whom only arrived in the Borough in recent years - clearly do not value the local flora or fauna and concepts such as environmental degradation and protecting wildlife mean absolutely nothing to them. So long as they can have their extensions and driveways and outbuildings, they are happy.

 

 

III.

 

For me, pollarding might be viewed as a form of hate crime born of a peculiar fear of trees (dendrophobia). 

 

And if I could, I would have all maniacal dendrophobes and other ecocidal lunatics rounded up and exiled on Mars before they transform this world into a barren and inhospitable hellscape in which no birds do sing and no flowers blossom.   

 

But, as it's Easter, let's close on an epicormically positive note and express the hope that, one day, even the Cross will put forth new branches and bear surprisingly sweet fruit ... 

 

 

Taraxacum officinale resurrexit! (An Easter Story)

Spanish bluebells and a bright yellow dandelion growing 

by the roadside (Noak Hill, Easter 2025)

 

 

I went for a short Easter stroll before dinner - γιουβέτσι with lamb - and on the way I saw a woman on all fours with a bucket, frantically digging up every small wild flower that had dared encroach on her precious gravel driveway. 

 

She looked over as I passed and so I enquired if she was having fun:  

 

Not really, she replied. I 'ate weeding, but it 'as to be done!

 

What, even the dandelions? I asked. 

Especially the dandelions - look at 'em rising up!

 

And when I heard this, I smiled and remembered the paschal greeting, responding with mock enthusiasm:  

 

Truly, they have risen indeed!    

Soon It Will Be Easter

F. N. Souza: The Deposition (1963)

Oil on canvas (138 x 170.5 cm)

Soon, it will be Easter ...

And this year, Christ's period in the tomb - post-crucifixion / pre-resurrection - will have a terrible significance and reality for us all, in this, the Age of Coronavirus and the Great Confinement, as we lie suspended between life and death, frightened even to cough or touch our faces.  

Of course, sooner or later, we will have to wake from our viral slumber and leave our domestic isolation. Even if our bodies are numb and full of hurt, we will have to move; assuming we're still alive and haven't perished behind the stack of quilted toilet rolls where we sought safety and reassurance, but which became at last a 3-ply prison.   

But it won't be easy moving back into life and returning from the land of the dead - particularly as the idiots in government have crashed the global economy. It might be spring and the natural world may be "thronging with greenness" [1], but things are, I suspect, going to be difficult for a lot of people for a long time to come.  

And, of course, we won't really be moving back into the same world, or the same life; but a different world, a different life (even if it has the appearance of the same). Sickness changes us and changes everything.

Indeed, what D. H. Lawrence once wrote of the flu is perhaps something we might say of coronavirus, namely, that it's a transformative disease: "It changes the very chemical composition of the blood." Hence, the fact that even when one does finally recover, "one has lost for good one's old self ..." [2].

Notes

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The Escaped Cock, in The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories, ed. Michael Herbert, Bethan Jones and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 126.

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), letter 3995, to Mabel Dodge Luhan, [14-15 April, 1927], pp. 36-38.