DARK FICTION
  • Home
  • About
  • Fiction
    • The Tor
    • Reformed
  • Short fiction
    • Collections
  • The blog
  • Contact
  • Ts and Cs
  • Your free ebook
  • Ten Years Gone

Taith Taf

1/11/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
​There’s a McDonald’s. In fact, there are two. There's a KFC. A Burger King. A Domino’s. A Frankie and Bennie’s. All scattered along the bypasses and roundabouts strangling this town, dropped like Lego bricks on a sick child’s duvet.
The river runs through and away from the town. Sometimes it doesn’t matter where you’re running to, just that you’re running.
It’s fucking freezing, biting my fingers.
The trail walks along the river. Stop here. Look there. Think about this.
Mist hangs in funeral wreaths over the river. In the water a fluorescent jacket clings to a rock, covered in long strands of stringy weed. Bright eyes in a gaunt face. Carling, Bulmer’s, Stella; their detritus hides in the undergrowth on the banks. Interlopers, all. A phrase from a movie pops into my head: “Never shit where you eat.”
Here, in the mist and drizzle, tracksuits clutching Home Bargains carrier bags, baseball caps skipping college, minimum wage zero hours, zero opportunities, zero reasons to stay, is anybody hungry?
Fifteen feet of mosaic forms a mural. Trams. An industrial past, the skeletons of which are still in the valley’s carcass. Miners. Happy, smiling miners, hardworking men of the pits, industrious men, hard hats, a pickaxe over one shoulder, smiling, not coughing, not desperate for breath, not post-industrial destitute, not dying of lung disease and COPD before they can enjoy their pension, not leaving widows in terraced cottages as cold a tombs.
Black and grey spray paint, the cheapest, nastiest graffiti of meaningless slogans, names, crudely-drawn bollocks, cover the flat-capped chappie on the Penny Farthing, obliterates the tram and the generation-to-generation shops, and the exciting high-rise housing of the nineteen-sixties, a flash new scrapheap for those left behind.
Not art. A dirty spray-can Fuck You to the sanitised, gentrified, tourist history.
It’s glorious. And I wonder if India, if Hong-Kong, if Cairo or Sierra Leone or St Helena or Ireland are told what their heritage should be.

Picture
1 Comment
resume writer direct reviews link
1/26/2018 05:47:52 am

Graffitis are meant to be artistic and authentic art pieces. For some, they may look unpleasant and dirty. However, people like me has a great appreciation of artworks like this. It represents freedom and the vibrancy of being able to do anything you want. As an aspiring artist, we should strive to show our craft as much as possible. We shouldn't be limited by physical contracts and such.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    This is my blog, which I'll update every month or so. I'll try to keep it focussed on writing, editing and promoting. To keep yourself updated on new posts click the RSS feed below, or for more information and news subscribe to my mailing list.

    Archives

    November 2019
    November 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About
  • Fiction
    • The Tor
    • Reformed
  • Short fiction
    • Collections
  • The blog
  • Contact
  • Ts and Cs
  • Your free ebook
  • Ten Years Gone