He notes nostalgically at the top of Burntwood Lane the blackbird's shrubbery, the lawn, the big elm, or oak, and the few dozen fruit trees, of one or two larger and older houses surviving — The almond, the mulberry, the apple trees in these gardens have a menaced or actually caged loveliness, as of a creature detained from some world far from ours, if they are not, as in some cases they are, the lost angels of ruined paradises.
From this road he could see the Wimbledon Electricity Works'', the Lunatic Asylum,28 playfields awaiting housing development and sorry unprotected elms which have one hour of prettiness, when the leaf-buds are as big as peas on the little side sprays low down. Then on a Saturday — or a Sunday, when the path is darkened by adults in their best clothes and children come and pick the sprays in bunches instead of primroses. For there are no primroses, no celandine, no dandelions outside the fence in Burntwood Lane.29
[TO GARRETT GREEN & HUNTSPILL RD]
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