Milton Keynes

Grey. A lone business man wanders lost, in a daze: how did I get here, what happened in that meeting, where did I leave my car? The footpaths wend their way through car parks, bonnets shimmering unnaturally in the dull light (ten coats of wax on Sunday?). Once in a while an office building juts from between the parked vehicles, cuboid and stark against the sky. Concrete. An underpass, another, and another. Cranes in the distance, the city regenerates and expands itself incessantly. A place of four-wheeled fauna, on foot the streets seem deserted, the pavements great rivers of concrete slab; divorced from the roads, divorced from people, divorced from anything familiar. Desolation.

Periphery. Houses in a row, 60s estates. Small packs of people here. Midday, in the gloom, drinking White Lightning and Tennants Extra. A Happy Shopper, the first sign of life for a long time. Some kids boosting a trailer from a garage. No ties, no briefcases, no offices. Desolation, depression. The cars fly past over the underpass; beneath is nothing.