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 ... 

 

 

Lady Chatterley's Lover Visits Harold Hill

My local boozer, The Pompadours - 

and some Lawrence scholars find the Sun Inn, Eastwood, a bit rough ...

 

 

Harold Hill is a long way removed (in every sense) from the fictional mining village of Tevershall, which Lawrence imagines in his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

And of course, I'm no Oliver Mellors, the ex-soldier turned gamekeeper who strides through the pages of the above in his dark green trousers "with a red face and red moustache" [1], angry at the world. 

 

Having said that, sometimes when walking around the postwar housing estate on the far north-eastern fringes of Greater London that is Harold Hill [2], I'm tempted to tell the natives - whom my mother always disparagingly called Cockneys - something similar to what Mellors wishes to tell the working men and women of Tevershall:

 

"'I'd tell 'em: Look! look at yerselves! One shoulder higher than t'other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves [...] Spoilt yerselves an' yer lives. [...] Take yer clothes off an' look at yerselves. Yer ought ter be alive an' beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead.'" [3] 

 

Of course, I'd not say this with a broad East Midland's accent. 

 

And I can't blame the degenerate condition of the locals on years of hard physical toil - on the contrary, it's the fact that many of them don't work (or exercise) that's the problem; that they prefer vegetating on the sofa watching Netflix, eating junk food delivered to their doors, driving even the shortest distance, rather than walk a few hundred yards.

 

To paraphrase Mellors: Their spunk's gone dead - e-scooters and mobile phones and cannabis suck the last bit out of them. Which is a shame, but there you go. 

 

I won't bore readers with statistics, but the stats for the London Borough of Havering when it comes to things like health don't make for happy reading. Obesity, for example, is the norm; if the 18th-century Essex grocer Edward Bright were alive today and decided to ply his trade at Hilldene shops, no one would blink an eye at his great girth. 

 

People down south often like to joke that it's grim up north, but, believe me, it's fucking grim on Harold Hill too [4].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 46. For a full description and character analysis of Oliver Mellors, see my post of July 2020: click here. 

 

[2] Readers interested in knowing more about Harold Hill are reminded of the post published on 28 May 2016 entitled 'And No Birds Sing': click here. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, p. 219. 

 

[4] And if you don't believe me, see the report in the Romford Recorder which revealed that whilst Havering is home to some extremely affluent neighbourhoods, six roads in Harold Hill have been classed by the UK government as among the most deprived in all England: click here.