TOWNS LIKE OURS
After the factory shut its doors, our town ticked by, in the way towns like ours do; tossed aside in favour of something new, something modern, something more suited to the times. Our rural life was a dying kind. The cogs that kept nearby villages going had long stiffened to a stop.
Big cities, office jobs, chain restaurants, shopping arcades built like basilicas – these were in vogue now. Mercy alone had allowed our town to survive this far. The first injection of life never came before May Day, when visitors appeared city-weary, eager for Mother Nature’s restorative balm.
But visitors were blindly unaware of the fact we were present all year round, whether they came or not. In shiny coats, impractical shoes, they sampled our scones, sipped our ciders, took postcard-perfect snaps of the wheat fields nearby and remarked: ‘Isn’t it charming!’ In return we offered crocodile smiles, chattered away as they wished us to and finally felt that our lives had meaning.
The day it happened, we were all taken by surprise. Of course, I joined in the horror, exchanging worried shots with my fellow townsfolk. ‘Who is it?’ hushed whispers rippled. ‘Who goes there?’
For everybody knew everybody in our backwater spot.
On the roof of the abandoned factory, a man paced, completely naked. A quiver of blubber, presented on a pedestal not quite high enough to make a god of him. The sun glared behind him in a blinding halo
