Last year the trees in the streets around London's Queen's Park district were systematically "pollarded", one of those English terms for which it's inconceivable there's a Chinese character. Pollarding is when the branches of the tree - not just the twigs, but all the branches - are pruned right back. It looked incredibly severe, and not at all pretty.
Yes, this is a global recession metaphor. This year, while nowhere near fully re-grown, each tree in the area now has a profusion of new shoots. The point is not that everything grows in time, it's that new growth is more vigorous and pervasive as a direct result of the most severe of cuts. Even this, as an observation, is a little trite. Our challenge is to find the opportunities to do things differently now, not just once, but lots of times. We need to realize that not every shoot will become a branch. Most won't. And it will take time.
