Outside, the delivery trucks load. The old bakery, a semi-ruin, stands tall but looks as if it is about to topple over and crush the few people wandering about in the mid-afternoon of a surly spring day. The sky is almost filled with sullen grey cloud, but there is the odd pocket-handkerchief of blue to offer some hope. The large white clock on the canteen wall reads twenty minutes to three. My plastic beaker of tea tastes as if it has been strained through a dish-cloth and then stirred with a rusty nail. It has the minor advantage of being free.
On the distant skyline I can see the tall and boxy shape of ‘Skypark.’ It isn’t an amusement and leisure complex of the type the Pet Shop Boys sing about in ‘Luna Park’ – ‘And when we're feeling scared, we're happy/ With circuses and bread, we're happy/ The whirling fair machines/ Are all we need.’ This Skypark is an office complex a hundred and fifty feet high. It dominates the area, but not as much as the motorway, which cuts a noisy swathe through this downtrodden district not fifty yards from where I sit. Over to the south rises a pyramid of apartments for which people pay a fortune to look out on a river where few ships or boats ever venture forth.
Suddenly, my eye is arrested by a white van that pulls up at the kerb across the road. A short, squat man with a crew-cut and bow legs steps down from the van. He carries a club hammer and long chisel. He picks a spot on the road, seemingly at random, and starts pummelling the chisel with the hammer. After about three minutes, he takes a torch out of his pocket and peers down the hole he has made in the ashphalt. It is as if he expects to find reserves of oil below the surface or the remnants of some ancient Pictish treasure-chest. Eventually he arises, lumbers back to the van, and then emerges with a curious metal contraption, with which he struggles, as a wind has blown up and is threatening to blow shut the van door onto his contraption. This comprises a long silver pole and a handle that attaches to the top of it. The man inserts the pole into the orifice he has made, and starts to turn the handle. When the handle is reluctant to turn, he gives the pole a clout with his hammer. When that doesn’t work, he wrestles the pole as if in a bout with Giant Haystacks or Big Daddy. After a few minutes of banging and wrestling, he removes the contraption and lumbers back to the van. Seconds later, he emerges with a longer pole with a bigger handle. He goes through the same process again, only this time with greater difficulty, for the contraption is almost as tall as him. I notice that he has the meaningless phrase ‘customer care’ emblazoned across his hi-visibility jacket, which is flapping in the strong breeze. After a couple minutes’ more of ineffectual handle-turning, banging and wrestling, he gives up in disgust and flings the new contraption into the back of the van. He drives off, leaving a hole in the road about two inches in diameter and about six inches deep. The whole operation has taken the length of my tea-break. I make a mental note to inspect the hole when I leave the office. He could have been a mole-catcher, I suppose, but he’s way off beam – he’d be much more likely to catch rats around here.
