.

country manor house

settled in its secret gardens

figures on the lawn

Another kind of beauty. Great grey ocean-going cranes, in line abreast with cabins the size of parish halls, herald a vast sky which promises Seven Seas and The Whole Wide World. A World which begins here. A dirty railway with its hopeless suburban stations skirts the docks; broad marshalling yards, confined by container mountains. A choking  six-lane urban freeway with flyovers and nerve-racked intersections adds grime and unloveliness to the disorder of the Global Timetable. Chain-link fences are bowed and broken. Bill-boards flaunt their tatters; and litter lodges against any obstacle or surface. Grass and weeds infest unclean nooks and crannies. Palimpsests of layered graffiti add to the incoherence of concrete consumer warehouses with their joyless names. War-time bombs and creeping commerce created this place. Beside the freeway there are crumbling islands: the remains of Victorian suburbs…