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Leafy or slippery?
• I HAVE recently moved to leafy Hampstead.
The Heath is verdant with oak, beech, hazel and hornbeam and it is teeming with small wild animals and birds (including a couple of rogue parakeets).
But if you take away the Heath is Hampstead any more “leafy” than say Balham, Dartmouth Park or Chelsea?
Undeniably there are many tree-lined streets in the village and the majority of front gardens are well cared for but there is also a never-ending roar of traffic snaking its way down the High Street and Fitzjohn’s Avenue, fluorescent barriers, ditches and builders’ rubble from works renewing the Victorian water system, plenty of litter on the streets and, while we are on the subject of mess, plenty of dog fouling to be found underfoot.
Whether Hampstead deserves the description “leafy” is a topic for lengthy debate among the town developers and conservation societies.
What is true is that, in November, on an early-morning stroll down Flask Walk you must take care not to slip on the blanket of colourful, damp leaves underfoot.
E. Coles
Heath Street , Hampstead NW3
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