Human Flower Project

Someone Has to Pay

John Levett turns his camera to an “ancient problem” and an ongoing conflict: whether the old trees of Cambridge will stay or go.

In Cambridge

Photo: John Levett

By John Levett

My listening of choice is BBC Radio Three. The channel began after the end of the last war as the Third Programme. At the time the Beeb had two channels—the Home Service (news, weather, shipping forecast, brains trust, uplifting talks) and the Light Programme (dance and light orchestral, comedy and game shows, even a ventriloquist and his puppet). There was also the World Service broadcasting western values, right-thinking and uplifting discussion to the oppressed and colonized and both. The Third Programme took the best traditions of public service broadcasting and applied them to the classical canon in music, the modern and modernist in poetry and prose, Shakespeare and Ibsen and the innovative and experimental in sound documentary. It broadcast every night between the hours of six and midnight, and if you had started listening on its opening night on 29th September 1946 and still do, there’s nothing you wouldn’t know about European culture and the British view of ‘the other.’ You’d also be civilized, pacific, smart, smug, nice to know, appreciative of debate, inclusive of others, comfortable in yourself and cosseted. Radio Three treats me as intelligent and persevering—if there’s something I don’t ‘get’ first time, I’ll not throw a wobbly, won’t switch off, won’t splutter through my Imperial moustache and spray out my Mazawattee tea, won’t croak.

Photo: John Levett

Most Saturday mornings through Winter I listen to CD Review (does what it says). This morning Daniel Leech-Wilkinson spent an hour (out of more than three) scraping down through over seventy recordings of Schubert’s Winterreise to arrive at a recommendation (incidentally the performance by Christine Schafer and Eric Schneider). Of all the Classical composers (and here I mean Classical in terms of a significant period of music rather than a generic style), I take Schubert to be the most modern. He was thirty-one when he died of syphilis (‘Use a condom!’) one year after Beethoven. There’s much to be said for playing music in the style of instrumentation and performance of its era, but it’s also a recognition of its universality and permanence if it can withstand reinterpretation by successive generations. Schubert always wins. If you knew nothing of their composition you’d be stunned by the string quartets and their date. If you’re sixteen or remember it, just been dumped, playing ‘our tune,’ looking at the ‘Dear John’ (or, even worse, ‘To whom it may concern’) tossed to the end of the bed, ground out the last fag, then Winterreise is the one to top yourself to. (Poet falls in love, the beloved fancies another, poet does the poetical thing and walks away into a meeting with winter, people and things that simply prolong and feed the heartache, meets with a hurdy-gurdy man and decides the hurdy-gurdy life is for him. Hippie tripe.)

Photo: John Levett

Alternatively, (s)he never paid a share of anything, never returned records (Are records still still made and lent these days? It used to be a real pain getting ‘em back after breaking up!), never stayed to the end of a Tarkovsky movie, always ate all the almonds and icing off an almond croissant leaving just the cardboard so slag the scumbag off and go for a dance.

Meanwhile, winter. Snow fell last Monday and, rarely for us, fell in Cambridge. We get a flurry every two years or so but nothing you can crunch underfoot or feel heroic about walking through; not something that brings a brief leap of the heart when pulling the curtains in the morning; nothing that brings the amateur snappers clustering on the fields at the back of King’s College chapel. But this year we have. Cue national crisis—schools shut gates, road salt runs out, bridges close, trains stop, buses never start, power lines crash, questions are asked of appropriate ministers and their competence to run a whelk stall, Finland copes so why can’t we? Personality weather presenters prance around their displays, adopt Churchillian tones, lead us in prayer. (Notice the term ‘Weather presenter’ used for this tribe these days. Any meteorologists amongst ‘em? I’ve had doubts since Nicole Kidman took it up.)

These days in Britain, if anything happens then someone needs to shoulder the blame. They used to be Acts of God but you’re not allowed to slag off God these days ’cos you’re going to piss off some sad bugger with a bomb which leads me on to wonder why guns can still be bought by Christian fundamentalists. Anyway … everything hereabouts is the fault of someone — salt in food, fat in food, sugar in food, beer in pubs, wine in supermarkets, cars on roads, airplanes on runways, birds in the sky—someone has to pay.

Photo: John Levett

This leads to a new mutation of stupidity beyond stupidity. Some Autumns ago, trains failed to operate on some lines because of leaves on the track. Think of that on two levels. First, this is the nation that gave railways to the world but still hasn’t sussed leaf technology. Secondly, those leaves keep falling in Autumn just when we least expect it. Just to beat that we had an explanation two years back that snow on the line caused delays because it was the wrong kind of snow. And some of these spokespeople manage to have children to whom they pass on their genes. (Cue last lines from Invasion of the Body Snatchers: “Get on your radios and sound an all points alarm. Block all highways, stop all traffic, and call every law enforcement agency in the state”.)

Which leads me to chopping down trees.

It is well known throughout Europe that the English need protection (I leave out the Kingdom’s Celtic fringe because they’re minorities and we can’t go putting the Scots and Welsh out of joint). We’re not as hardy as we used to be and the authorities set in place above baby-sit us; everyone gets cuddles and kisses, tears are wiped away and sweets generously thrown around. Unless, that is, you’re a member of the labouring (i.e. working) classes, in which case you’re the cause of the problem; you’re the cause of global warming with your cheap flights and plasma tv screens; you’re screwing up the National Health Service with your drinking, fattening and falling over; you’re causing overpopulation with your wanton sex (‘Use a condom!’); you’re causing death by shock to grannies by walking the streets in daylight hours. And you’re the reason why we have to chop down trees (although the reason escapes me at present).

Photo: John Levett

Cambridge is blessed with trees and it’s a joy to walk across the commons and greens in Autumn and leaf fall (of the right type). In proportion it’s not New England in the Fall, the Thüringen forest or the Ardennes but it’s still neat. It’s neat in Winter too. They’re ancient trees and the bare branch webs are worth a stop and a wonder. The problem with ancient is that it falls apart; age, canker, end of life. I have an idea that Cambridge City Council are into the game of arboreal euthanasia—get it before it falls on a head or close to one thus causing onset of agoraphobia preventing citizen from leaving house forever thus bringing forth claim for extortionate amounts of compensation thus bankrupting said Council.

I can see the point of timely intervention when trees are damaged and diseased ridden but it seems any abnormality (tree slightly drunk and leaning) brings action; hence armies of the armless, the legless, the twigless, the girdled. To give the Council credit they replace all removals and their conservation team are very clued up on complementary plantings. A friend of mine has two fine firs at the bottom of her garden overlooking an allotment site and has been offered any replacements of her choice if they could remove the firs thus cutting down the water requirement of the allotments and returning the shredded firs to the allotment soil once composted.

Photo: John Levett

All that makes sense but there seems to be a growing ‘corporatist’ attitude towards trees within urban areas where they’re seen as ‘street furniture’: something that breaks up a space, adds colour to concrete, shifts an eyeline—something removable and replaceable when faded or scuffed. Cambridge, like most of Europe, is a building site mostly residential and retail. These constructions are moving into mature (last third of the nineteenth century) areas of the city that grew with the railway. Many of these, particularly surrounding the station and the old flour mill, have mature but still vigourous trees in large numbers.

Preservation of this growth and the micro-environment they support gets lost in planning applications or smothered in developer-speak. There have been recent fellings around Byron’s Pool in nearby Grantchester and along Hobson’s Brook near Trumpington Road. It’s well-known that local councils are reluctant to turn down new developments that can generate income and employment for a community, and even when local concerns are accommodated the developer has a battalion of lawyers against which the cash-strapped council team is pushed to compete if applications go to appeal.

Later this month, Friends of the Earth are appealing a decision regarding the removal of over a hundred trees close to a new transport interchange associated with our current guided-bus construction serving traffic from Ely through to south Cambridgeshire. I’m guessing the appeal will fail. The development includes a lot of student accommodation which is needed and almost half of the other residential is ‘affordable housing’ meaning for those on low income; the ubiquitous shopping, office, and hotel construction pays for the ‘social need’ side of the complex. It’s a common trade-off these days and as the recession deepens then environmental issues will get shoved back. And governments breathe a sigh of relief: won’t have to deal with those again for a few years.

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