un-topia: failed utopia
dystopia: built to fail
both the delight of the misanthropist (me?)
a concrete un-topia. thamesmead. part setting for clockwork orange, misfits. a concrete tidal wave encroaching on woolwich’s braced back. swampland reclaimed (reclaimed? claimed in the first instance) from the thames. grey monolith of a town-sized city of doom. on the outskirts of town down under where the wings of the spaghetti junction flap smoothly to the ground and the grey ribbon segues smoothly in amongst the undergrowth; a space, a cubby hole, a gap:::
cupboard under the stairs
they began building a wall here, a conventional brick wall with mortar spread satisfyingly like baloney on all sides of each block of red dust… it peters out, shaven off at the top by a phantom superstrong saw. badly matched, above, the sloping slabs of concrete forming the road above impose a grey shelf topped with steel fence and garnished with monochrome graffiti tags and bird shit.
but it’s the space in between:::
gap exposed by brick, bone, dust, slab
what lives inside? local junkies, teenagers with cans of scrumpy, a thin shaft of greying light? stray cats? a hoard of trash from 1979?
not filled; curiosity allowed to peak at the sight of a dark space under
brick grows up from the earth in an unavoidable stumpy mass
concrete meets it above, unforgiving and STARK
remnant of a new and hopeful now un-topia superimposed on the traditions of Old London
