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Sun and wire

There's a site about a mile and a half away I finally rode to today. A former depot that has been demolished and mostly cleared already, presumably to make way for a few hundred homes.  The fencing was the usual rectangular frames of wire, clipped together, about six feet high.  Not too difficult to climb over except that there were extremely busy main roads on two sides (with traffic lights) making it impossible to make an inconspicuous entrance.  After a preliminary walk around the other two sides were almost totally inaccessible, being closed off by houses on one side and small industrial units on the other.  The only apparent gap in the fencing was through a car wash so I nervously walked through to the back and was able to sneak in through a gap in the barbed wire, hopping over a narrow dry ditch.  I got the impression this was the place the local kids used for access.

The demolition of the former buildings had been completed and there were only a few mounds of rubble left to be shipped out.  The site foreman hadunfortunately positioned these heaps in the far corner and so in the middle of a September afternoon they were silhouetted by an unexpectedly fierce sun. Maybe they had specifically desired a contre jour effect when they thought of putting them there.

I was edgy and sweaty and didn't get any decent photos, or even manage to expose or frame very accurately, partly distracted by wondering how I would get back out - as the ditch made any clambering back throught the barbed wire a far harder challenge than getting in had been.  As it turned out I missed the spot when returning to it and found a completely straightforward unobstructed narrow gap instead - duly noted for future reference. Then back home for an ice cream in the garden and reading about Edward Weston in Mexico in 1923; his relief at managing to swop a dozen prints for new clothes for him and his young son, and later recording while travelling something I empathise with, 'I have always been fascinated by barren wastes' - prairies and deserts in his case, rather than brownfield land in mine.

Lying back to look at the sky, occasional jet planes at high altitude, for once leaving no vapour trails, almost lazily bi-secting the blueness, and elemental, like white sharks,  The near air zig-zag full stuff, pollen, insects and noiseless birds.