Cast parapet, pierced rondel design, the canal oiling its way under, under, and the great letters on the end wall of a warehouse BRITISH WATERWAYS, weathered, flaking, the midland red brick sound, it appears, the red strong enough to come through that amount of blackening, of discoloration, and the buses, I remember, great green and cream buses, and yes, they have trolleybuses in this city, too, the disfiguring lines overhead, they seem so obsolete, quaint even, now, how long is it since they were running in London, remember them taking down the supports, masts would they be called, poles, the relief of the clearing of the air, literally, in certain streets, King Street Hammersmith, for one place, which seemed so much less oppressive once the overhead lines had gone. In this city the width of the streets is better able to carry them visually, the lines, so they call them, overhead tracks, wires anyway, trolleybus wires, remember the surge of acceleration riding in them, in London, as a child, quite unlike a bus, the inside, too, larger, though the seats were similar, in their furnishing, and so on, but if you were standing when one accelerated, you had to be holding on, or you were thrown back. Perhaps I can get a trolleybus to the ground, perhaps they run a special Saturday service, yes, find out later, doesn't matter now, let's find somewhere for lunch, a good lunch, I enjoy eating in a strange city, I must eat anyway, I persuade myself, wrongly, I should think, who knows, but on these jobs I feel so hungry, it's connected I suppose with the insecurity, of coming to a strange city, my response to insecurity is to eat, this is why I am overweight, no, fat, or so I persuade myself, again. Yet I know this city, I should not feel insecure here, not for that reason, anyway, but for Tony, that insecurity is worse, his terrifying example. And I do not know yet where I am going to eat, that is insecurity, is it not, for me? How the mind can take these things in, calmly, discuss them, hold them, and still be affected, terrified by them! The mind.
The trolleybus wires decline shallowly, irregularly away, down, then up, in the distance, this must have been a valley, beside the castle mound, from the railway, no, the railway would have altered the contours, the slope from here is from the wide bridge at the railway entrance, an artificial level, practical topography, is that it? The wires lead into the city, they lead out again, make something significant of that! Smuts on the low shopwindow cill. Yet this is called a clean city, no heavy industry here, remember an acquintance, who was he, don't remember, someone at my first, no second job, the chocolate and confectionery barons, saying that he was coming here because London was so dirty, there was no heavy industry up here, he quoted to me the light industries there were, I forget them now, why should I remember them? Yet my mind clutters itself up with so much rubbish, you'd think it would keep this rubbish as well, the which-light-industries? rubbish. Smuts on this cill blow as the buses pass, left, keep low, blow, swirl. Army surplus, so long after, but many of the parts not looking army, they can sell anything, fascinating shops, to many men, wish I understood more about science, about electronics, would like to make purchases here, have to fight myself to stop myself buying the useless things, would not know what to do with them, the handsome parts, the aluminum panels and the switches and pushes and contacts and warning lights. Whereas I am not at all drawn to this windowful of NO-DEPOSIT television sets. A display of bottle-ends, are they real, in a gents' outfitters, an artistic layout, as they think, they, the crass businessmen, their ideas of the artistic, of layout, ha! Their windows, they know from experience what sells, or do they, they must do, what point is there in this? What point? Ah, a dome, yes, it's that big public building in the main square, yes, with the shops underneath, the town hall, only they don't call it the town hall in this city, no, something else, city hall, no, too Americanized, that, what is it? Used to go shopping there, underneath the Town House, is it called, with Tony and June, sometimes, could go there again now, on my walking way, in this way, up there, it starts on rising ground, on ground having risen, rather, ha, make my way there, it's an object, it's an objective, it will pass the time.