VALUE (Nature 01)

 VALUE 

By Richard Banks 

It was seventeen years ago that I first came to Wyburns Avenue. I arrived on foot, an estate agent’s leaflet in my pocket, to view a house on the edge of town, backing onto an industrial estate. Neither of these factors encouraged me to think that this was the place for me, but, at least, it was worth a look. Indeed, having viewed nearly twenty properties, and found them all for different reasons unsuitable, I was beginning to despair of finding one that was.

         It had to be the right house in the right street; not one or the other - both. While I was not hopeful that my quest was about to end I at least had the consolation of a sunny morning in April that had finally shrugged off winter and was slowly, but surely, warming the air about me.  

         The corner into Wyburns Avenue unfolded slowly, no sudden turn, rather a slow unwinding, with a grass verge on one side of the tarmac pavement and a high privet, interspersed with laurel, to my right. With the view ahead restricted by the hedge my first sight of Wyburns was of a concrete road pleasantly aglow in the sunlight and, beyond it, a corner bungalow next door to two post-war semi’s. OK so far, but could it be a yes?

         What came next, as I finally turned the corner, was probably going to make-up my mind as to whether this street was a contender or a definite no. What I saw next was a cherry tree, pink sprays of blossom against a blue sky, a light breeze silently trembling it’s wide spread branches. There were two more to come and further along, on the other side of the road, two stately sycamores on a grassy corner that none-the-less had room for a road that I later discovered looped around to join up with itself.

         My tree count extended to an oak as high as the sycamores and, like them, beginning to clothe its winter skeleton with a first scattering of leaves. There were other much smaller trees in some of the front gardens, along with bushes, large and small, some in bud but for now preceded and upstaged by daffodils, yellow trumpets silently exulting in the miracle of Spring.

         Some of the gardens contained people, tending flower beds and lawns while others were washing cars on paved driveways; one of them, having ventured beyond his garden gate, was mowing the grass verge outside his house.

         This was a road that people liked living in, took pride in. A black and white cat was crossing the carriageway at a leisurely pace, knowing that there was little or no traffic and that the chaffinch it was stalking was only too aware of its approach not to flap its sheeny green wings in ample time to escape. A nest in one of the sycamores testified to the existence of other, larger birds, presently unseen. There would, I felt sure, be squirrels, no doubt a fox or two.

         I was hooked, and as I drew level with the house in the leaflet I was fervently hoping that this was not going to be the wrong house in the right place. That would have been cruel, but then how could a neat, well maintained house called Holly Lodge with stained glass windows in the front door be cruel? No, that could never be.

Copyright Richard Banks