and rotting. The Ravensbrook became a dump for old iron, rusty

cans, abandoned boots and the like, and was a river only when

unusual rains filled it for a day or so with an inky flood of

surface water…

That indeed was my most strikingperception in thegrowth of

Bromstead. The Ravensbrook had been important to my imaginative

life; that way had always been my first choice in all my walks with

my mother, and its rapid swamping by the new urbangrowth made it

indicative of all the other things that had happened just before my

time, or were still, at a less dramatic pace, happening. I realised

that building was the enemy. I began tounderstand why in every

direction out of Bromstead one walked past scaffold-poles into

litter, why fragments of broken brick and cinder mingled in every

path, and the significance of the universal notice-boards, either

white and new or a year old and torn and battered, promising sites,

proffering houses to be sold or let, abusing and intimidating

passers-by for fancied trespass, and protecting rights of way.

It is difficult to disentangle now what Iunderstood at this time

and what I have since come tounderstand, but it seems to me that

even in those childish days I was acutely aware of an invading and

growing disorder. The serene rhythms of the old established

agriculture, Isee now, were everywherebeing replaced by

cultivation under notice and snatch crops; hedgesceased to be

repaired, and were replaced by cheap iron railings or chunks of

corrugated iron; more and more hoardings sprang up, and contributed

more and more to the nomad tribes of filthy paper scraps that flew

before the wind and overspread the country. The outskirts of

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