Mid-Lands (Retro-Spect)

 

All Images: Castle Donnington, Leicestershire, Summer, 2020 

Pause for a while in the distribution zone.  Here we are peripheral and interstitial - even as we are inserted into a key node of the logistics machine.  Equidistant and decentred - but paradoxically integral.  We have bypassed - only to double back into the parallel networks of feeder road, power transmission and just-on-time delivery.  

Cross the concrete drainage gully and climb a steep embankment.  Crouch low, amidst the tessellating geometry of pylon shadows.  Overhead, the sky is sectioned and festooned.  Shards of negative space interlock in bright, buzzing air.  Feeble saplings chafe against support poles and ratchet ties.

Elevated.  Stare across mini roundabout and fenced valley, to where the artics wait -  plugged into their hub.  The new economy is meditatively silent at this range, but always - another departs/two more arrive (before the total can be calculated).  The hidden life-support for the incessant lifestyle demand.  Cavernous anonymity combined under one vast roof.  A fully automated, all-illusions shed, hiding in plainer-than-plain sight.

Beyond - the eternal hum of slip-road and motorway intersection.  A distant generating station, powering down at the end of its fossil-life.  Turn 180 degrees to watch a cargo plane climb  from behind landscaped shoulders.  A splinter of light - plumed and roaring, as it banks overhead - twisting onto the flightpath.