The Memory of Trees
June 19, 2006 at 1.37 pmDown in Old London Town this weekend, I ended up being driven through our old neighbourhood - Kensal Green, Kensal Rise, Ladbroke Grove, etc. I’ve been through plenty of times recently, of course, and seen the place change over the years, but this time something struck me.
No, not a bullet. Or a half-brick. Which would, admittedly, be typical.
Trees, in fact.
In all my old stomping grounds, its trees that bring home exactly how long it’s been. In Kensal Green, I remember walking to school down avenues lined with trees that must have been about 3m tall. Probably fairly recently-planted, back then, in an effort to make the place look better. Kensal Green seems to be a slightly newer area, sandwiched in between two older areas, with College Road (on which we lived) and Harrow Road seem to be the boundaries - both older areas feature very large and very mature maples, with big old terraced houses rather than (slightly) newer semi’s. I can’t remember exactly what sort of maple, but they’re a particular species that shed their bark in flakes, so are therefore excellent at growing in polluted areas. As late Victorian London undoubtedly was, which is when they might have been planted. I don’t really know about these things, though.
Anyway, the tree-lined streets. My memories of them also feature plenty of dog excrement, which seems to be happily lacking (mostly) these days. Now, the trees are "proper" trees, as opposed to young growth, with proper lollipop shapes, several metres tall, with enough foliage to form a sphere of green that shimmers in the breeze.
I don’t know about you lot but, in my head at least, trees just don’t seem to grow - they stay the way they were, in an unchanging mental photograph. Possibly even sepia-toned!
I remember noticing this a couple of years back as well, when visiting a friend* who’d moved into a flat on Brondesbury Avenue, in Kilburn. Her flat was about 30 yards from a flat in which I’d lived, at the tender age of two - we’d moved out (to Kensal Green) in 1981. My earliest childhood memories are from that flat, and of that road in subsequent years - dad used to park the car on it when we went shopping on Kilburn HIgh Street. Or whatever it’s actually called.
* Little Jenny Rickerby, who’d lived in the room next door to me in Hulme Hall. Sadly, we’ve fallen out of touch in the last five years 
I remember the trees on Brondesbury Ave being just a little bit taller than my dad. From a four-year-old’s perspective, that’s pretty damn tall! Now, over twenty years on, they’re proper trees.
The mature linden trees on my current road, Tenby Avenue, are slowly being replaced by ornamental cherries. Maybe one Spring day, many years from now, I’ll happen back in the area to discover a road full of swirling cherry blossom, from trees that have reached their full height once more?
