To get a panoramic view of our prefab estate you have to climb on to the roof of the yellow corrugated coal shed. Do not be taken in by the myth that there is little to see round here - especially on a Saturday! In the space of a couple of hours a super-charged trolley cart will race down the back road. A home made space rocket bursts into flames and stays obstinately rooted to Planet Earth. The two kids who made fall out and start wrestling on the green. Copper Jones gets off his bike, adjusts his cycle clips, and surveys his troubled terrain. A queue forms up by the Co-op van ("Share number 24419!") The oil-smeared face of Pete O'Clarke's old man looks up from the underside of his motor-bike side car. Ronnie Rogers' mum hangs up her seventh load of the day on the washing line. One of Semprini's Serenades crackles from a wireless set. An angry hound stares down at the chicken hut in Martin Filligan's smallholding and licks its lips. A roar goes up from Twiverton Park as the ball thuds into Merthyr Tydfil's net. (It is followed by groan - the goal has been disallowed!)
Look up to the hills of Lansdown. A cloud is giving a tentative caress to William Beckford's Tower. Beckford (1760-1844) inherited a fortune from his slave-based sugar plantations in Jamaica. He wrote the Gothic novel 'Vathek' (1786). No wonder the caress given by the cloud to Beckford's tower is a tentative one. No wonder the light green speckled hedge in our front garden is biding its time.