The artificial sun
Aug. 21st, 2005 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezYears ago, when life was brown and the television flared, small brother and I used to be regularly dragged away from our playthings of wavy asbestos, calcium carbide and the creosote pit, and taken away to visit our grandmother. She lived next to a timber mill in the odd landscape near Upton-on-Severn, in a house that offered commanding views of the RSRE Malvern.
However, this entry is not about that.
On the way was a place called Teddington Hands. I've been trying to recall the nature of the road layout before they stuffed in a lumping great roundabout. There was probably an AA box. I'll probably go dig out the relevant OS map in due course, but the important thing is that there used to be a building there named 'Arlingham garden machinery'.
This entry is not about garden machinery either.
Since then, though, the name 'Arlingham' has stuck with me. As has 'Moreton Valence', although for different reasons. If you look at a map of that end of the country, you'll see a huge kink in the river Severn. At the right level of detail, it looks like the roads just give up and melt into the river edges and with the right sort of mind it's easy to imagine a kind of mist-shrouded Avengers netherworld of taciturn farmers driving Series I Land-Rovers between remote sheds held up by little more than bloody mindedness.
Today though it was sunny, and we found this by accident. Very likely the sort of place where John Steed would be found.
The other reason I'd wanted to potter around there was to go view the abandoned chocolate factory on the Gloucester & Sharpness canal at Fretherne Bridge. Imagine, if you'd be so kind, the sort of art-deco white concrete frontage usually to be found adorning a Gaumont, Regal or Ritzy cinema in your local high-street (though the ones that are left now bear the unfortunate sigil of the evil Watherspoons organisation). The sort of buildings that look like temples to Ming the Merciless. At Frampton Wharf, we find Ming the Merciless' ceremonial chocolate store.
One bridge further up the canal, there stands another temple. This one clearly made by some chocoholic cargo-cult. They'd obviously seen the Cadbury barges loading and offloading tons of chocolate in the dead of night and decided to erect a similar building, so that they also might partake of the bounty (and presumably Jamaica rum & raisin).
It's probably not made from wavy asbestos, but it looks as if it should have been. Which is pretty much where I came in.
Pictures are still in the Lomo, and the phone, come to that.
However, this entry is not about that.
On the way was a place called Teddington Hands. I've been trying to recall the nature of the road layout before they stuffed in a lumping great roundabout. There was probably an AA box. I'll probably go dig out the relevant OS map in due course, but the important thing is that there used to be a building there named 'Arlingham garden machinery'.
This entry is not about garden machinery either.
Since then, though, the name 'Arlingham' has stuck with me. As has 'Moreton Valence', although for different reasons. If you look at a map of that end of the country, you'll see a huge kink in the river Severn. At the right level of detail, it looks like the roads just give up and melt into the river edges and with the right sort of mind it's easy to imagine a kind of mist-shrouded Avengers netherworld of taciturn farmers driving Series I Land-Rovers between remote sheds held up by little more than bloody mindedness.
Today though it was sunny, and we found this by accident. Very likely the sort of place where John Steed would be found.
The other reason I'd wanted to potter around there was to go view the abandoned chocolate factory on the Gloucester & Sharpness canal at Fretherne Bridge. Imagine, if you'd be so kind, the sort of art-deco white concrete frontage usually to be found adorning a Gaumont, Regal or Ritzy cinema in your local high-street (though the ones that are left now bear the unfortunate sigil of the evil Watherspoons organisation). The sort of buildings that look like temples to Ming the Merciless. At Frampton Wharf, we find Ming the Merciless' ceremonial chocolate store.
One bridge further up the canal, there stands another temple. This one clearly made by some chocoholic cargo-cult. They'd obviously seen the Cadbury barges loading and offloading tons of chocolate in the dead of night and decided to erect a similar building, so that they also might partake of the bounty (and presumably Jamaica rum & raisin).
It's probably not made from wavy asbestos, but it looks as if it should have been. Which is pretty much where I came in.
Pictures are still in the Lomo, and the phone, come to that.
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Date: 2005-08-21 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-22 01:11 pm (UTC)ooooh... instant nostalgia...
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Date: 2005-08-22 02:11 pm (UTC)Lovly part of the Gloucester countrside that entire area though. Would like to be there now.