In The Night Factory

Strange changes of mind have been happening to me recently. It seems like every time I venture out of the door something happens whereby my original plans are thrown out, replaced by new ideas and intentions. I have just sold my car and this has meant that recently I have had to make more use of the local paths and roads to get around.

I had decided to go out into town to get some essentials and when I was there I suddenly made the decision, without any real reasoning, even though I had not yet bought the list of things that I had intended to, that I wanted to make my way back home and not wander around town any longer.

I paced up the road on the way back feeling the rain clouds slowly closing in on me and my wish to get home became ever more urgent. With every step of my boots the gradient of the pathway seemed to increase in steepness, to a point that when I passed the school at half way I had to stop and take a breather.



Sitting on the bench, looking around, I spotted a women spewing out a full bucket of soapy water onto the road surface, its suds trickling on the slopes, her head disappearing as quickly as it had appeared behind the tall walls that formed a part of the roadside. The water made an expressive mark, dribbling across the road.



I felt the urge then, to step out, into the road. For the moment I thought it was all clear.
Once in the middle of the road its flow of bumps and patchworks became more evident. With one ear to the sound of a roaring engine behind me I inspected the river of marks and abrasions lying stiff and dormant at my feet. The earth had moved below the tarmac and a series of ripples had formed. I spotted signs of movement in the different coloured patchworks and recently laid sections of tar. I felt that people had marked out certain areas as if for special consideration, to designate that area or this area for future plans, to further the development of the road surface.



The fluorescent yellow colouring of the grid might have meant that it was only to be used in emergencies, that take place at night time, the pattern of the top attempting to mimic loosely the structuring of the surrounding gravel, muck and stone-inlayed tarmac. Workmen, for their part, had obviously attempted to leave a mark by pressing boots into the recently painted grid before it was dry, in 1995, for time immemorial.



Many variations of shadow and texture made up this lower grey deserted area, marking out a history of incidents and accidents, of gouges and pot holes covered up and pasted over, being continuously re-knitted to form an ever larger and more detailed patchwork.



The scored surface was pressed into to make openings like an advent calendar. Strange puppet heads could appear when lifted up? Some clue perhaps in the top markings, a mystery language to mark out one ductile plate from another. The ground is hard and stubborn under foot yet appears moulded like as if it were made of wet toast or worn leather?

Could there once have been a melting and a pouring, then a spreading all over being topped off topping off with sewn-on plates varying extravagantly in size and dimension?

The molten material had perhaps engulfed everything in its path and descended, as a river of dirt, down the hill. That would explain the apparent chaos of the undulations and the odd bits of clothing still showing through the surface in parts?



The clouds above clustered together and turned a darker shade of grey with the sunlight burning through, glancing off the wet tarmac, welding together the fine pores of the surface that looked, at that moment, quite like the texture of a well done cake just pulled from the oven.



The hill becomes steeper and my slow walk peters to a standstill. My legs are so tired that I feel they are going to drop off at any moment.



Standing there, I close in to inspect the grade A metal that is stamped into the Autumn ground, scraping away the leaves.



They have underground people in New York don't they? I was expecting a figure to pop his head up at any moment and shout a greeting. He had left his folding knife by the doorway, which a stranger might perceive is an insignificant piece of cardboard.

I framed some passing strangers through my lens but then changed my mind.

Glad to get past the worst of the hill. I was now just around the corner from home, looking forward to getting in, all these unnecessary detours had worn me out.



I dumped myself inside and having taken my shoes off and put my aching legs in the bath to soak, I started thinking about getting something to eat.

I go to the end of the road and back and take pictures of various spots, plodding along in the yellow light of a dark early morning. A car turns out from a side road, passing my body stooped behind a tree. My self looks funny in the odd hours of the morning, a stalker, staking out the houses, peering over hedges, wandering in parks.

My first mistake is to turn the flash off on the camera, thinking there is enough light coming from the street lamps.

Across the horizon the glare of headlights rises and sets upon the reflective surface of the roadway. An early morning worker blurs past me and dives into the country road, it eats him up.



I can go almost where ever I want, I think, although I am careful not to disrupt the people asleep, behind the windows of the houses on this road on the outskirts of town. I cannot go in the fenced off gardens or wander into the gated and locked building site with signs fixed to the wire saying keep off and listing the degrees of fines or penalties for trespassing. They have locked the door to keep me on the roadside. The little area with its one man trucks and miniature diggers, road drills and chain saws lying about. It is an experimental workshop secluded from the surrounding school and residential areas by a thick set of bushes, a gate marking the entrance positioned in from the road for large lorries to provide raw material in the day time. These are the signs of an expanding town, developing new constructions. A busy town with figures rushing about.

Behind a wild hedgerow that runs all along the road are positioned an array of what looks like out-buildings of various sizes; Six Caravans and two long tubular constructions like nuclear bomb shelters, the windows opaque with the build up of grime. The grass has grown about them as if they haven't been lived in for a while but it is difficult to tell in the dark and not being able to get up close. Some form of temporary accommodation perhaps, travellers passing through; not around here, they could be shot by groups of marauding farmers, I've seen them roaming the hills. Maybe they bought the land and couldn't afford to build so they just moved in one of those do it yourself house kits or even an ex-army portable type construction and as the family got larger they extended the space out with caravans. That seems logical.



I look at it and think, if only I could buy a piece of land, I could start off with a tent and possibly build on top of that, put a fence around the edge, everybody needs a fence it seems, that's civilisation for you; fencing and lighting, lighting to be able to build a fence etc. The pictures are'nt going to come out. The view finder keeps shows a blank, it's too dark; This camera doesn't have the sensitivity to pick up the reflections, the deep and rich textures that I am glorying in all around me. Nature flies under the radar of modern digital technology. Well, just take them, what ever.



I try out the flash and I immediately feel as though I am part of a crime investigation scene, imagining the chalk outline of a dead man that had been shoved from a passing car. Inspectors all over, ruffling in the grass, sectioning the area off.



Starting to rain again. My outfit is getting ruined!



The dog is kept in by a seven foot fence, so says the sign. Wooden slats, just one more style. I hear no sound, probably out and about in the neighbourhood, they have night sight don't they?



The country road reaches far into the unlit countryside, its insides swathed in dense black. You can move your arms around in there and remove yourself from the physicality of your body. The cracks in the trees show light but where you are the dark is impenetrable. I sense nothing but the gentle breeze waving the branches all around and a feeling of floating around in the middle of it all. A black curtain that you can run and disappear into, away from the lights and the gateways and just feel the rough tree trunks and gravely road under foot. The deathly quiet is hallucinatory. I can hear my breathing loud inside my head. I reach towards the light. Is this the way. This is the way? If a car was to crunch up the right road now would I have time to dive out of the way, or not?



My trainers splash on the water logged steps leading up into my flat, back to finish off my sleep. Inside I can see below the lights blurring. Those singular people in the cold wet stillness of the morning stride habitually to work. They take the short cuts and the cars jog along the tractor trails, loose stones flying out at the grazing sheep, bouncing off their layers of damp wool.



The black, that has veiled everything, thins out to a deep blue and the light begins to press through into the day unveiling rain drenched greens and reds. More vehicles roar up and soon there is a chorus of growling engines. Children take diagonal routes across grass and muddy their feet, up onto the pavements, through the back alleys and out towards the main gates.

I go to make some coffee and open the window for the steam of the kettle to pass out into the morning chill.

The sky brightens in its lavender mist that clouds the roads and hovers quietly in between the houses.

It rained, I could tell before as the clouds were coming over. After a week of hot sun at last some liquid to cool the air. The puddles were receding and I decided to go out with my camera. I saw a documentary about Tarkovsky recently and one of Tarkovsky's close colleagues had observed the director one evening during a freak thunderstorm. The rain was hitting the windows with force and a puddle was forming inside a door in the house they were staying in. Tarkovsky stood watching this build up of water until the storm had finished its flashing and pounding of the building. The clouds dispersed and warm sunlight slowly entered through the windows. Tarkovsky stayed by the window to watch the puddle that had formed recede and dry up over a period of a couple of hours. In this time the wet mark changed its colours, fading until the floor was as it had been before the storm had begun. The seeping of the water into the house and receding back into the atmosphere fixed Tarkovky's attention and he stayed staring at the area long after the water had gone.

The water had seeped in under the shelter by several feet. A mixture of the opening sunlight, the rain and the spongy quality of the surface had created an unlimited number of subtle effects on the slabs, thin canals of green moss flowed in-between. The moisture illuminating the years of usage, the fine grained layers of interaction seeped down into the concrete, making up an almost visceral scaled effect.

Edges of constructions where government road teams had made errors, although the pleasure of filling those frames of stone with a flood of tar and then to watch it dry and grow old with time like the battered skin of a drum, must have been interesting. The shingle of grit and fag ends creates textures that are highlighted by the receding moisture of the rain.



Where the man had ran out of wood stain and the rain had run the bird muck down.



On the pavements of the back roads where the people live on the outskirts of an average town, the rain had come down. Then the sunlight appeared like a grey glow through the misty clouds, natural lighting effects for the timeless man, stepping from his flat, wandering around on the grassy knoll. Peering over garden fences and through windows, getting down on hands and knees and trying to look like a property surveyor. I can hear the phones going now - for the large frowning chap leaning across my rose bushes sergeant!



The bins are kept in their own room in the flats with its own wooden barn door to the outside, a metal grill helping the rotting smells drift off into the damp air outside. The insects had built their lives around this place where I hold my nose and trundle my bin out slamming the doors and breaking several webs and flattening spiders as I do so. An insect lays fixed to the wood, looking alive but not moving and had been there for days. Who knows how many minute living things are trapped in the gaps of those grill lattices.

Just before the rain came down the grass had been cut, the machine had come running around the sides of the hill spattering tiny particles of chopped grass, causing texture like the stuff you might buy in small plastic bags at modelling shops. It mimicked the splashing of water, rotting into the ground or being blown away.

Meantime, a film by Mike Leigh. Released in 1983. My unreliable memory of this: The drab colours inside the dark smoky pubs, streams of foggy light entering through the mottled window pane. The pub with its side rooms has a separate atmosphere of its own and a hatch to pass pints of lager top through. Skin heads in their bomber jackets and underage kids in duffle coats taking it in turns to go to the bar. At home the houses are fitted with simple angular technology with no 'Bass Expander' or mini-disc nor CD player. The white metal washing machine with has bare shiny metal edges and a Russian porthole for a door. Through the window children are seen rolling marbles into the gutter. The streets are grey and wet, the housewives scuttle around the angles, through the shadowy underground passes and into the indoor shopping centres, on their way to shop, some wearing exotically coloured head scarves. A young Gary Oldman dances along the wall that lines a litter strewn walkway, screeching and barking in the cold air. He opens up a pale blue door and asks if somebody is in. His tall figure, fitted with bleached jeans, bomber jacket and bobble hat, is seen to step inside. The dingy flat on the second floor of a block of flats is decorated on the outside with a regular viridian green in flat squares punctuating strips of wet grey wall. The sky threatens rain as the grey clouds encroach to seal the vision of a run down London estate where there are long queues outside the benefits office with an officias lady behind the bullet proof screen at the counter - 'sign your name there love', the young man clothed in layers of oddly fitting jumpers and greyed drainpipe canvas trousers, squints he eyes behind his broken national health glasses at the form moved towards him across the wooden desk where the varnish has worn off and where he pulls at the metal chain to grasp the shiny black pen, scribbling his name.