The Winchester

2010, Sometime

Cathedral City

I made my way down to Abbey Mills one night with the children, following an excellent meal at some restaurant on Stratford High St, where we drank as much of the finest wine a fistfull of crumpled fivers could buy (one bottle between four). “Korsham Kidz, swigging Vodka on Westwells Road”, was the headline on the rumour-mongering 28DL months later; but we’ve been playing this game since before we’ve been walking.

Counties

Popping a lid outside Abbey Mills, we swiftly dropped it down again when we realised it would drop us into some heavily gushing sewer. Gush gush gush, none of that was needed. We entered Abbey Mills with military precision, given the assumptions that as the lights were on, we thought we’d get caught as soon as we walked in the door.

Some big dial or something.

Nothing actually happened, but we treated this ‘explore’ with the same sensitivity as one would a wander around Cane Hill on a Sunday afternoon in May 2007. I don’t know what I was expecting to happen; a security guard dressed head to toe in orange hi-vis, with the head of an alsation or a doberman, barking at me in foreign tongues while calling the World Police on me on a radio from the nineties. Damn right, we didn’t have a clue about this place’s security.

Daleks

A dalek stood on the edges, flanked by his brethren. Gina, being a n00b, dropped something from the top floor to the bottom. I’ve sat on the pictures since, on the basis that keeping schtum about the site may protect it’s privacy. Flickr put paid to that, the HDR crews battling with the battenberg cake lighting. I just hit the ‘greyscale’ button and let Lightroom do it’s dirty work.

Point your Lay-SERR  at the Sky

Victorian Pumping stations are an interesting breed. Dying, maybe, but at least they’ll be hung onto like the body of Kim Il-Sung, caked in a sarchophagus for eternity by virtue of the dedicated few that keep them crisp. Baz’s cathedrals, left as a monument to the past. Abbey Mills opens up for pre-booked tours – in summer 2010 you didn’t even need to book, for they didn’t even provide a guide.