Adapting

Babylon town is not without footpaths, so I took my dictaphone for a walk and recorded some reflections in my lunch break.

“My role is to provide computer support to an international company, let’s call it MaxiRam, to manage a logistical problem. I’m hoping that in return they will help manage my own logistical problem, by giving me an “unescorted” visitor pass in exchange for my “escorted” one. This will enable me to pass through doors without assistance from others, a freedom one normally takes for granted. I look forward to obtaining a form so that this item of neckwear (a card on a ribbon) may at least be applied for, subject to all necessary authorisations. Then I will be able to reach the toilet on my own and not like a prisoner under guard.

“The most popular architecture around the MaxiRam megalith is cuboid windowless warehouses in shades of beige and white, with only a company logo for decoration. I saw the name of a well-known supermarket chain, and decided to buy some chocolate. Approaching closer I discovered a cluster of its buildings: head office and national distribution depot—hence the vast warehouses, queues of trucks and logistical efficiency. But no retail, no chocolate.

“I suddenly thought of the latest media scare that’s gripping the UK: the culling of 160,000 birds on a turkey farm in Suffolk to stop the spread of bird ’flu. Workers in white protective suits and breathing masks have grabbed the birds, gassed them and trucked the carcasses two hundred miles to a place where they are “rendered” and incinerated. Popular feeling is building up to stop eating turkey or chicken from these intensive farms and I hope they all close down everywhere. At home we gladly pay twice the price for free range chickens who enjoy life before slaughter.

“It’s unfair to make comparisons between that bird farm and Babylon Town. Human beings are adaptable and I’m trying to record my feelings before I adapt in my turn and stop feeling the oddness of these vast windowless cubes where people sacrifice the hours of their daylight. It’s not as if they are descending into pitch-dark slate mines for twelve hours at a stretch, with the price of candles deducted from their wage, as used to happen in North Wales.

“Indeed one of the warehouses bears a palette-and-brush logo, signifying artists’ materials. It houses a company whose boast is “Trusted by artists worldwide”. So it’s not fair to contrast the cogs of industry grinding up human sensibility with the uncompromising clear-eyed vision of the artist. No, no. We must pay our dues in mind-numbing routines so as to afford the products that mind-numbing routines conspire to provide.

“I return to the tall fastness of MaxiRam, like a medieval castle with the striped boom of its gate for a drawbridge, the car park for a moat, Reception for a portcullis. The Englishman’s home is his castle, they say. I feel friendly towards this castle. It’s becoming my home.”