Battle, bus, baffled
Posted 5 February 09 by Scott AndrewsOne of the roads I walk down on my way to work is a nowhere road.
By this I mean that it has been completely razed and rebuilt in the last forty or so years. On one side is a railway line, all brick arches and car washes. But parallel to it runs the new DLR on big concrete piles, masking the history behind it.
On the other side, at the corner with a busy thoroughfare, are three old houses, hanging on for grim death. Then there are a row of eighties boxes, then a lot of ugly council blocks, all set back from the road. This gives it a sense of space but also of not really being a place people live.
It’s a road – a strip of tarmac down with cars drive – but it’s not a street – like, say Coronation Street or what have you; a place that feels like the home of a community.
The effect is only heightened by the high rise sixties blocks that loom over it further down, and the wide cycle path that runs alongside the DLR.
It’s a desolate place, robbed of all its history and context.
The name of the road?
You can see video of what it used to look like in 1936, when it briefly marked the front line in the British resistance to fascism.
It’s silly to feel sentimental about such things, but if ever a street deserved to be cherished and preserved, surely it was this one.
Instead, one feels that even the ghosts have been moved along.
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This morning I did not have the right amount of money for the bus to the station. This is the school bus, remember, which I share with a hundred or so kids.
I felt chastened as I sat in the luggage rack, with my dunce’s cap on. I can’t help feeling that the bus driver was far sterner with me than a normal bus driver would have been.
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Am catching up with Season Four of Lost on my spiffy new Sky+ HD box (ta, Dad :-)
Wifey sat in with me last night, folding laundry, watching it in passing. She watched some of the early episodes, so she knows the set up.
After about ten minutes she was moved to opine: “I have absolutely no idea what is going on.”
I pondered this, tried to frame a brief, cogent explanation of current events, and then replied: “Join the club.”
But I don’t mind being in the dark when the storytelling is this clever and the series’ return to form so marked.
Keeping track of the timelines, though, is getting bloody difficult and I can’t help but wonder if it’s alienating any but the most die-hard viewers.
I appreciate being asked to do a lot of work, and I think the rewards are obvious, but how many people are willing to put this much effort into a telly show?
It’s rather heartening that so many people seem to be sticking with a show that sails perilously close to ‘obtuse’ but always manages to tack back towards ‘thrilling’ at the last moment.
