condemned

Even I can tell that one of the big, tall cedar trees out front has developed an unencouraging, even a malevolent list towards the road. If it were to fall, it would not only take out a neighbor's car or two, but a whole lot of electricity cables, with dire effects to the apartment block next door, and therefore probably to our bank balance. So it has to go (and this is quite apart from the root system that disrupts our basement). It has, indeed, a whole lot of white chalk crosses on its trunk, as though it has the Black Death.

I just hope that I'm out of earshot when it comes down. I've always thought of tree saws as murderers - partly because there was a large, benign, noble cedar at the bottom of Hillside when I was little, which the people in #16 - the Tylers? - took down because it blocked their view, and that was the end of a historical living thing. And then Wimbledon College School, at the end of #21's garden, took down all their big trees and built a swimming pool and squash court. I used on summer nights to listen to the wind in those trees, and to the sound of the Stones' Satisfaction playing at the Youth Club dances, and plan how to sneak down to the fridge and steal some lettuce hearts, since some misguided person had told me that they contained cocaine. One will believe anything, when one's eleven.