An eternity of mud / visionary genius / pack soil on soil / earth removal / endless development

Absence of cynicism / watching and waiting / an oasis of Regency / the muted quiet of Kennington

On a late Friday afternoon in November / the cloistered calm of a Westminster mansion block, 

unhurried and unaffected by the rapacious change of the city, everything sits silently here as it 

always was / the smell of incense burning in Westminster Cathedral the hushed expectancy of the confession booth the low drone of the organ gazing at the shrine of the Sacrament the gold glittering in low level light we feel suspended calmer around the believers / a purple priests robes hanging in a shop window / the Regency café is closed between 2pm and 4pm / the Thames is over there / peering at Blake through an A4 lens / are things better or worse than then / a rich old man struggles to find the keys for his Landrover Discovery he is wearing dark green corduroys farmers shirt green gilet / one of the mansion block’s has its own built in restaurant the whole area looks like a film made by Americans set in London in the 1980’s perhaps a feature length episode of Murder She Wrote or parts of An American Werewolf in London the smell of shepherd’s pie is strong /  a Thames barge full of dark brown gleaming mud glides under Vauxhall Bridge like a piece of giant conceptual art where is it going we ask ourselves maybe they are building an archipelago off Purfleet.