We are standing on Southwick Hill. Lost. Underneath the glorious and giant electricity Pylon. Lost. Under an eternal blanket of a blue sky with little fluffy Orb clouds dotted like shreds of white candy floss as far as the eye can see. Lost.
Memories are drifting, like the clouds, into the switching ethernet of my mind. Visions of childhood. Of seeing these metal giants – the Electricity Men, like Ted Hughes ‘Iron Man’ – with metal legs that go on forever, six huge tightly coiled arms, doubled over, burdened for the modern centuries, to resolutely stand and carry the awesome weight of the nation’s power.
And carry the burden they do – over the valleys, over the fields, over the farmyards and over the watercourses – the National Grid Union of Pylons.
Into the villages, the towns, the cities, powering the networks, the social networks, flowing on the wire, to charge a million smart phones, charging these microchip hand machines with light years of wizardry technology – plugged in, waiting for the ping, the buzz, the fix – of a crack-hit of a digital smiley face to break a monotonous day into rays of sunshine.
Lost on Southwick Hill, it feels like ground zero, promising new beginnings, and tying up old endings. A touchdown of mankind’s roots in nature. My soul mate partner and I are scouring the fringes of civilisation, where the Downs meets the Towns, to locate the old home of her long departed, close in memory Nan. We are lost, under the humming power lines, and she is lighting up with buzzing energy and memories of her lost childhood innocence.
And I am thinking of the Peter Gabriel tune ‘Solsbury Hill’ and of a ridiculous and sold-in George Clooney dressed in a knight’s outfit flogging tiny plastic pods of coffee advertised on the Box.
All powered by the Pylons, dependent on the Grid.
Back in the darker ages, when there was more lucidness and distinction between the manifest shadows and light, would rebel packs of Luddites have scaled these giant Pylons of Power and wrestled them to the ground, like the youth pulling down the bronze statues of ex-slave owners in the Cities of Commerce.
The Pylons – that can simultaneously light a million lightbulbs or power a million hate tweets – with a flick of switch or tap of a finger.
If the Pylons fall, or the Grid goes down, where will these spawning viral videos of fist clenched, finger knuckled, ink tattooed messages of Love and Hate go?
Back on the pathway homewards, lost no more, away from the metal Wicker Man of electricity, I look out to the oceans where the transatlantic optical fibre carries these messages. And a passing thought turns to the toppled statue of an American president – the Big Daddy Ubermensch – who for a time loomed over the world like the shadow of a giant Pylon, who for a time ruled by Tweet alone, who for a time burned like electricity into the minds of millions – until the battery charge on his smart phone powered down, faded, and died in his sweaty palms.
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