Bleeding Canker - the movie.

Toy Story.

Imagine life as a three-part film franchise. The first film is childhood and adolescence: fresh, original, with twists and turns, you don't know what to expect but it ends up a big hit, especially in retrospect. Then comes the sequel, tricky to follow a box office smash like that but there are some of the same characters and this time there's a love story too, plus it ends with a marriage and some kids. Bit predictable, maybe, but everybody likes a happy ending. 

Except it's not, they bring out a third and to be honest it's not a film you'd normally go and see. Night At The Museum 3? Don't think so. The Hangover Part III? Nah. The Godfather Part III? Best glossed over. Now only a few of the original cast remain, those who didn't scarper after they made a mint and a name for themselves; the writers are definitely the same, though, because it's work, init, and it's a tried and tested formula. Thing is, when they reassemble to brainstorm the third plot they've used all their best stuff in the first two and frankly they're knackered. Sometimes in the late afternoon one or two of them nod off. 

Get the picture? Movie number three is middle age and beyond and it's not something I ever dreamed of as a girl. I don't think anyone does. You can foresee a bit of college, friends, travel, love and marriage, babies, who then turn into cute children. You can see your future self as part of your own little family, going on bucket and spade holidays, pushing children on swings. Maybe, if you're particularly imaginative, you can envisage your forties with teenagers, still a bit cool, perhaps sharing a spliff or accompanying them to a gig. But beyond that, as a saggy-skinned empty nester falling asleep on the sofa in front of The Great British Bake Off? Nope. Never imagined it, definitely wouldn't go and see it if it were a movie.

But hold on a doggone minute, because there's always hope in the form of an exception to prove the rule and in this case it's... Rocky III. Only kidding, although that was a massive hit, with a massive hit song to go with it. No, for me it's Toy Story 3 because that is a brilliant movie. I defy anyone not to be moved by the bit where the gang link hands as they edge toward the incinerator's fiery abyss... and the denouement when Andy gives his toys away when he's about to go to university, that always makes me cry. And that's pretty much where I am now, plot-wise, with another son about to leave home. In a little less than two weeks there'll be only one boy left and so far the only thing the writers have come up with is that mum goes back to uni.

Cantankerous.

But there are some advantages to midlife. If you're lucky you might finally hit the jackpot property-wise, that damp flat in Streatham with the negative equity is a dim and distant memory. Now you find yourself in a beautiful house watching The Great British Bake Off, and in my case that house is - and I can't quite work out how this has happened - in one of the world's coolest inner-city neighbourhoods. "Uber-cool" in fact, according to Lonely Planet.

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/aug/24/tooting-london-lonely-planet-best-neighbourhoods-restaurants-pubs

Not so long ago I told people I lived "near Balham" because they'd never heard of Tooting. Not anymore. Now I shout the word across rooms at parties just to watch hipsters turn their heads. It's all true what they say. We do have a Turkish 24-hour shop from where we buy warm pide for 70p. We do have a gentrified pub with craft beer round the corner. We do have a mile long "curry corridor" from Tooting Bec down to Tooting Broadway. And then there's our pièce de résistance, the Common, with its Lido and its stunning avenue of mature chestnut trees, and you know where I'm going with this, don't you. There's trouble brewing in our "gritty urban" paradise.

If this were a movie here's Wandsworth Borough Council stepping up to play the villain. An evil and intractable force hell-bent on felling 54 of these stunning trees, many of them more than 150 years old, turning this much-loved shaded pathway into a Chernobylesque wasteland despite not a single arborist recommending it, not even the ones employed by the Council itself. So why are they doing it? Because they have a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, that's why, and it's less expense and hassle than maintaining the trees to make sure the bleeding canker they suffer from, which most are surviving, doesn't cause one of them to suddenly and expensively shed a branch on top of a person.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/the-tooting-chainsaw-massacre-angry-backlash-over-plans-to-fell-row-of-150yearold-trees-a3624486.html

I love that avenue. I got a bit involved in the campaign to save it. Well, I went to some meetings, manned a stall at a fair, put a poster in the window. Now news arrives that the campaign has failed, the avenue is to be felled over the next few weeks. It's going to go from looking like this...

To this...

https://www.facebook.com/SaveChestnutAvenue/   

So I suggest to my friend Kay that we tie ourselves to a tree when the men turn up with chainsaws. Always one to up the ante she counters that we do it naked. I guess it could make a good story. We might even occupy a tree in the manner of Lisa Simpson in that episode called 'Lisa the Tree Hugger.' We'll be the rebel alliance striking back against the evil empire. All of a sudden this movie has real plot potential. It's Shirley Valentine meets Educating Rita meets the Empire Strikes Back and Calendar Girls, up a tree.

Love E x

@SaveChestnutAve

P.S. The third in a worn out old franchise.