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You can see them from wherever you are. When you're up here you can see wherever. A clump of young beeches and the odd fir form a dark blip on the ridge above the Northamptonshire / Leicestershire border. There is talk of a causeway camp long, long ago; there are marks on old Ordnance maps indicating a windmill. Always a meeting place of both people and trackways, there is more recent talk of the derelict single storey cottage being built in the 1930s for a chap to live in with his emphysema. Up in the wind, to help his gasping lungs. And the wind does blow. Producing ghostly squeals as the beeches crowd in and rub against the lichened brick, moaning in the rotten chimney stacks. Next door the air moves icily through the glassless metal casements of a wartime observation post, still with its wooden bunk beds up against the wall. In this strange grouping are also concrete entrances to bunkers that must have given chilling credence to the words 'Cold War'. Of course my boys thought they'd gone to some kind of windy heaven. They ran up here yesterday, dashing in and out of the swaying trees and invading the cottage like a landing force, moving from room to room with shouts of glee. "This is so awesome Dad". And then they unearthed the mossy skulls. Sheep, we hope. They carried them back down the hill like battle trophies, singing songs snatched away on the March wind. Just as it probably always was, a long, long time ago.
Now. Between you, me and the lichen-covered gatepost, I have been busily putting together a portfolio of pictures that demonstrate John Piper's maxim 'Pleasing Decay'. I keep showing them to my publisher who just stares at me and then out of the window. He won't read this (he thinks blog is the name of a spaniel) so if any other bookmakers fancy a punt I'll slip an example under the door in a plain brown envelope under the pseudonym Maurice Mildew. The idea is to record things (derelict corrugated iron barns, rusty signs, discarded farm machinery) that are simply disappearing, not through any overtly planned destruction, but rather by a gentle and innocent neglect that gives them an uncertain beauty. So no to burnt-out hatchbacks, yes to abandoned horse boxes with trees growing out the roofs. Which brings me to Church Lane. Leicester cares for its cast-iron street signs (I've seen blokes up ladders painting them) and it won't be long before this example gets the once-over. It's on a wall in Knighton next to the eyecatching Queen Anne-style gate lodge to the hall. But on closer inspection I noticed that the rust on the sign is an exact match for the colour of the brickwork. How does this happen? Is it that I saw it at the precise moment in time that the deepening rust matched, and next month it won't? There's got to be an obvious answer that I can't see. And it isn't that the wall and sign have all been painted from the same tin. The brick is brick. Oh, pass me a beaker of WD40.
You can see them from wherever you are. When you're up here you can see wherever. A clump of young beeches and the odd fir form a dark blip on the ridge above the Northamptonshire / Leicestershire border. There is talk of a causeway camp long, long ago; there are marks on old Ordnance maps indicating a windmill. Always a meeting place of both people and trackways, there is more recent talk of the derelict single storey cottage being built in the 1930s for a chap to live in with his emphysema. Up in the wind, to help his gasping lungs. And the wind does blow. Producing ghostly squeals as the beeches crowd in and rub against the lichened brick, moaning in the rotten chimney stacks. Next door the air moves icily through the glassless metal casements of a wartime observation post, still with its wooden bunk beds up against the wall. In this strange grouping are also concrete entrances to bunkers that must have given chilling credence to the words 'Cold War'. Of course my boys thought they'd gone to some kind of windy heaven. They ran up here yesterday, dashing in and out of the swaying trees and invading the cottage like a landing force, moving from room to room with shouts of glee. "This is so awesome Dad". And then they unearthed the mossy skulls. Sheep, we hope. They carried them back down the hill like battle trophies, singing songs snatched away on the March wind. Just as it probably always was, a long, long time ago.
