The bricks are densely packed on top of each other. They
have no room to breath like the sandstone and wood of the country.
Instead they stack in lines forming square corners that three times go
back to the queue. Waiting forever to get nowhere. Collectively
they mimic their original form in giant oblongs that reach to the clouds, only
to find that the sky is as cold and wet as the hard ground. If this urban
jungle had a ceiling the whole city would look like a brick. Before them,
in the townships and villages of yesteryear, there were only rocks. They
would fight against being piled up so easily. Walls on farmland, hundreds
of years old, still beam with every character that makes them.
Cottage-oak and barn-timbre breath creative patterns and fine art.
Even stone brick, though still too standardised for the most part, is at
least friendly in its sturdiness. But city bricks, especially those
facing centrally, that have never felt proper weather, have no discernable individuality
at all. Each wears the same suit as the rest as far as I can tell.
Now I cannot blame the bricks for this for as far as I know they cannot make nor lay themselves. Equally I mustn’t judge the city, for
it too was just a few cottages worthy of a public house once. In fact I
see nothing worthy or noble in penance of any sort. It also has to be
said that some suburban architecture that seeps into the city walls can be
vastly unique, especially in the steep conformity of the drifting style on many
ages - the new cool, which will soon freeze. Also worth highlighting is
that even one of low intelligence can see the hypocrisy in the Yorkshire stone
calling the red brick black. From a distance, indeed, the fields of
village Yorkshire or even Cumbria may look even more tarred with the same brush
than the flats of London and in some ways the style could benefit from some
more imports. However it is in those hand made raisings, as we may call
them (instead of buildings) due to their connectedness to local rock, in which
fires roar. Here 'tis the brick on the highest moor that finds success -
not merely the one on the top of the ladder, or the crane as it may be these
days.
I’ve begun to ramble in metaphor you may have noticed. And ramble I do but not in the city. Amongst the skyscrapers and tramlines we
run. Forever trying to minimise our
journey time yet never actually being anywhere.
Like the towers of Shang Hi we must always be ready to move but never
enjoy doing so. Here in the hills though
we are more like the pebbles that slowly tumble down the footpath; they are
always still yet have never stopped. It
can be said (despite popular phrasing) that the city always sleeps for in its
fast paced anxiety it swallows time.
Like dreams you wake with hazy memories and unaccountable years. Out in the green hills time will not be
rushed. Sit, we may, for hours with nothing
happen. Here we can live a long life in
the true sense. Every hour of daylight
is an hour of genuine time and every hour of night is two with candlelight and
whisky. Hopefully forever I have
forgotten the urban jungle ambition for these peaceful village meadows. Here I lie in the golden stone made with rock
rather than the red brick pathed with broken gold.
