Running on empty - 4

And come they did. For a while.
Two office blocks had taken up almost a third of the available space that had been left since the demise of the furniture factories.

The small, age-old chair manufacturers had made this part their own. Wood was cut from the nearby hills and in the woods they turned out furniture. The original Bodgers.
Year upon year the factories had grown, merging and growing in stature, they became giant houses of brick to house the new machines that could take a piece of wood and shape it by lathe or drill to exact dimensions on a scale that befuddled the brain. They could produce more chairs than there are people to sit on them in next to no-time. Far faster than a man on a foot-powered lathe in the woods. Household names arose, International recognition. Then it became cheaper to produce the furniture in far off lands, whose forests they now plundered, and where there was space to put them and there is cheap labour.

She lowered herself down the rope another notch. Up here was a good view and she paused once more to look. What she saw was the railway and canal swapping aspects.

The canal continued straight through from left to right and disappeared behind the hills that rose to the west while the railway drove over the water then curled away east and then south, away across the town proper and on through the valley toward the big City. If she had hauled herself back up to the roof she now hung from, she would be able to see the northern end of the valley; the fields that stretched outward and the woods and copses that scattered the land. In the meantime another giant-sized vine-eye awaited a home.
The site below was a hive of activity. A workforce armed with hammers and picks and spades and forks worked the soil and drove in stakes and raked out pathways. Her chosen role was to tackle the wall.
A feature that had been ignored on the plans, but such a gigantic feature could not be left to simply become a mere backdrop. It needed more attention. So it was that a cunning plan had been hatched by the very person hanging from the roof - drilling holes and inserting plugs and screwing in eyelets from which she would later string wires.

Beyond all the frenetic activity at the site she still had odd feelings about it all. The whole thing was somewhat surreal. Used to more mundane things like survival, she had adapted with some shyness.
Adoption had not been on her agenda but that is what seemed to be happening. She had been adopted by the Church.
Something was needed that was for sure. How long could a life of debauchery go on? The overwhelming feeling that had been given was one of forgiveness for sins. Which was odd; It was true that sometimes she despised herself but she had never approached anything without a healthy degree of suspicion: But Sin? She wasn't sure about any of that.
So, in essence the Way of the Christian was as blind as that of the heathen – they both put faith into something outside themselves.
Simple when it is reduced to words. The academic treatise on the nature of Man.
But inside her soul, that very piece of her that these Christians wished to plunder, deep, deep in there she held out a respect for Anyone(thing) who could knowingly lay down a Life to the Greater (foreseen) Good. That was impressive.
The downside was how it made her feel inside. She did NOT want to confront those horrors thank you. The deeds she had done, sights seen and life lived gave pause for thought. They send a shudder through a frame that tries to withstand the pressures of living day to day and taking opportunity first. A world where Love is an alien concept but something that is sought after but remained unspoken as tho’ by agreement.
Inside of course she felt like sh*t!
Inside it was awful.
A sense of WORTH was being instilled where a sense of shame had previously reigned.
Not liking the contradiction that her own mind gave her she had begun to worry about things. Far more used to trying to bury memories and deeds she found difficulty in shaking off the strands of a chance to hand them over to some(one/thing) else. Awesome was not even close.
So the Word hit home and days were spent in close examination of faults and of possible repair.
Look inside to find the face.
Each day bringing new things, new people, new ideas. She began to absorb the fraternity. Began to experience the ‘joining of minds’ set aside for these disparate folk. Each of whom had a story to tell.
The mind was in turmoil. These lovely people had led lives of family and of care and love, they could not relate to a lowly, wretched slut such as her…

Being proved wrong can be a revelation...

...continued

Running on empty - 3

Moving day came and went in a blur of Purpose. No time to stop and think, only time to do.
And when the caravan had been put on-site and plans had been presented, days spent rushing from here to there to visit Architects and Planners and men in suits that shook her hand and looked at the lowly with scorn in their eyes and she had wanted to get out of those places and back to more familiar territory, but the days had worn on with further meetings and breathless introductions and she felt the whole world must now know who she was and didn’t like it at all and still they kept coming – details, attention to detail, give us what we want to know, let us Help you….. – at the end of those awful days, one glorious evening when the sun had hung in the air all day but had resisted the urge to set until now and was dipping below the bridge so the shadows of the girders were projected onto the wall of the factory; she sat cross-legged on the roof of the tiny hut and regarded the area of land which had been entrusted to her.
The caravan looked tiny against the backdrop of the vast wall. She eyed the habitat with suspicion. It represented a far more ‘permanent’ feature than she was used to. The word itself was almost anathema. During the rest of the evening and into the darkness she played with the idea of Permanent, watching as the shadows raced up the wall.

The months passed quickly due to busy-hands. The plans as shown for the garden were simple and consisted of a lot of concrete paths that swirled around a central seating area. The rest of the space was filled with groups of trees. When finished it would have looked fine in any shopping mall anywhere in the world, but for here it was just – wrong. She went back to Arthur and demanded a few answers….
She discovered that some things are open to interpretaion. Some things can be negotiated. She learned that ‘People’, are not always right. And she found a little bit about what Love is in its many aspects.
In lifes’ inimitable way she discovered many other things as well, not least among them was the power of Worth.
With the passing of the seasons came other lessons – Nature is fickle.

The caravan had presented problems to her from the start. As the weeks went by it became an issue. At first she had been thrilled by the idea. A roof to call home. Then the doubts had set in – what is Home anyway? What do I need a Home for? Will I be able to run across town or even to the next city with it?... Isn’t a Home made up of more than one? How do I make a Home?
When the evenings grew darker the temperature took an early tumble and cold swept through the hut, still she slept in the hut and not the caravan, despite the oppulence of a sealed roof and a door that closes to keep out draughts. Other than use it as a kitchen she had loftily ignored its presence. She wanted to maintain that Hard-edged lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. She was, she thought, invulnerable to any further hardship than had already befallen her throughout her life, The simple truth being that she was caught in the trap of wanting something more than her pride would let her, but she pushed that thought away. Pride was NOT an option.

Years in the planning, months of arguments over the design, weeks spent over settlement over the cost (cheaper to do without concrete, better to let the land find it’s own paths.)
It was wild. Much use was made of wild flowers and grasses. A little judicious weeding would be required, much as a meadow should be mowed; Trees had been included because trees are needed. Besides, trees are good to look at, especially if lots of seating for the wayfareing folk to sit and gaze upon them is included. Water was provided by the canal, no need of water-features. Let the framing of the canal through arched panels provide the views. Let the railway take its place with its wild flowers showering the banked earth just before the bridge. Let the factory provide the shelter for fruit trees along the base and climbers to ease and shuffle their way upward and outward to smother the vast expanse of brick and provide a fitting green setting to this lost oasis in the midst of desolation…. And let the people come.

The Secret People

Every now and then somethings catches the eye. This did it for me.

I like pomes.

The Secret People.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,

For we are the people of England, that never has spoken yet.

There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,

There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.

There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.

There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;

You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:

Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.

The fine French kings came over in a flutter of flags and dames.

We liked their smiles and battles, but we never could say their names.

The blood ran red to Bosworth and the high French lords went down;

There was naught but a naked people under a naked crown.

And the eyes of the King's Servants turned terribly every way,

And the gold of the King's Servants rose higher every day.

They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,

Till there was no bed in a monk's house, nor food that man could find.

The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak,

The King's Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.

And the face of the King's Servants grew greater than the King:

He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.

The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey's fruits,

And the men of the new religion, with their Bibles in their boots,

We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,

And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.

We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;

And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.

A war that we understood not came over the world and woke

Americans, Frenchmen, Irish; but we knew not the things they spoke.

They talked about rights and nature and peace and the people's reign:

And the squires, our masters, bade us fight; and never scorned us again.

Weak if we be for ever, could none condemn us then;

Men called us serfs and drudges; men knew that we were men.

In foam and flame at Trafalgar, on Albuera plains,

We did and died like lions, to keep ourselves in chains,

We lay in living ruins; firing and fearing not

The strange fierce face of the Frenchman who knew for what he fought,

And the man who seemed to be more than man we strained against and broke;

And we broke our own rights with him. And still we never spoke.

Our path of glory ended; we never heard guns again.

But the squire seemed struck in the saddle; he was foolish, as if in pain.

He leaned on a staggering lawyer, he clutched a cringing Jew,

He was stricken; it may be, after all, he was stricken at Waterloo.

Or perhaps the shades of the shaven men, whose spoil is in his house,

Come back in shining shapes at last to spoil his last carouse:

We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,

And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.

They have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,

Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.

They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;

They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,

Their doors are shut in the evenings; and they know no songs.

We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,

Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.

It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,

Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.

It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest

God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.

But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.

Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.

G.K. CHESTERTON