Residing in a tree is the only way to save it from pointless destruction

On Wednesday evening, as the mild was fading, I stood chatting underneath a London airplane tree to Marcus Carambola, who was about to commit his 50th consecutive evening sleeping in a hammock among the the tree’s branches, 10m over the pavement. Carambola, barefoot, 33, spoke of the tree as an aged mate: “We have received to know each individual other really perfectly,” he claimed, wanting up.

The 120-yr-aged tree, in Oakfield Highway, in Haringey, north London, has come to be the emblem of a fight in between inhabitants, insurers and the nearby council that has implications for leafy streets throughout the region.

The owners of the two neighbouring houses, aspect of a Victorian terrace, have for the earlier 10 decades been engaged in a everyday living-sapping battle with their respective insurers, Aviva and Allianz, in excess of the insurers’ obligation to shell out for underpinning and fix work brought on by subsidence. The expenditures operate to £400,000. A pair of decades in the past, the insurers seemingly noticed a new way to steer clear of this payout: they elevated, with scant evidence, the thought that the plane tree – though pollarded each individual yr by the council – was the sole induce of the problem and sought to shift liability for repair to Haringey. If the council taken out the tree, they argued, underpinning would not have to be performed, mainly because the challenge – regardless of the drying local weather and clay soils – would magically go absent. The council took the path of minimum resistance. Two earlier attempts to slash down the tree have been thwarted by protesters. The newest is established for tomorrow.

Carambola, in the meantime, has been instruction locals, the youngest 18, the oldest 72, to take his place in the hammock so that the vigil can have on and choice cures be located. “If this a single goes,” he suggests, “all the trees you can see, and hundreds more are also below threat.” The campaign is linked to other folks throughout the place. He programs to be nonetheless up in his hammock in 50 days’ time.

Gospel truths

An activist retains up a Bible outside the house Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, in Jackson, which is to shut right after the Roe v Wade ruling. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP

I once had a lengthy, typically fulfilling doorstep discussion with a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses that commenced with me suggesting that there was extra handy wisdom in Shakespeare than in the gathered books of their Previous Testomony. It ended with us investing quotations from our respective gospels, them providing me “thou shalt nots”, me making the situation that they ended up “such stuff that desires are built on”.

A pair of items reminded me of that dialogue past 7 days. The to start with was the news that Sheffield Hallam college was closing its English literature class in gentle of the authorities concentrating funding on “useful” levels. Conservative voices have normally wished to limit entry to the humanities they spread the word about question and empathy and dissent. The second, blunter, reminder of my doorstep standoff was a banner in the Roe v Wade protests: “I’m not part of your reserve group,” the banner browse. “I really do not give a fuck what the Bible states.”

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Responses on a postcard

Barristers wearing wigs hold up a poster that begins: ‘£12,000 median income in first 3 years’Hanging barristers outside the house the Outdated Bailey in London on 27 June 2022. Photograph: Carl Court docket/Getty Photos

I’m in a weekly pub quiz team that is from time to time radically enhanced by Shaun Wallace, the most formidable of quizzers on ITV’s The Chase. Shaun’s working day position is as a criminal barrister, and in the previous 7 days he has been on the picket line at the Outdated Bailey. The dispute, he claims, is a no-brainer. Junior authorized support lawyers get paid out about the exact now as when he started out in the career extra than 30 decades ago. You don’t have to be a Mastermind champion (2004 for Wallace, distinctive topic FA Cup finals) to know that pretty unique solutions are essential.

  • Tim Adams is an Observer columnist

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