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| Baron Wolman |
Malouf could be described as a mechanical archaeologist; the workings of contraptions; especially the workings of those archaic engines now mostly defunct; be they combustion, steam or clockwork; being the focus of his autistic concentration.
Those engines - firstly obfuscated by the microchip and subsequently made all but obsolete by the advent of battery culture – but they radiate, for Malouf, an occult halo of magic and wonder.
He’d come across them first at the age before he could read, on the cover of a pulp science fiction paperback rescued from the shelves of his father’s workshop. He’d hidden the book under his shirt and smuggled it to his bed to be consumed in private.
Later, while Arabic was spoken exclusively within the small, damp flat his mother had managed to secure after they came to Northampton, his obsessive reading ensured that his English improved logarithmically, and as his grasp of the internal 3D world inherent in the design of machinery became firmer so too his consumption of archaic technical manuals scrounged from charity shops increased.
Living in and frequenting the library in Northampton he couldn’t help but become aware of the legacy of its local scribe and chief mythologist, Alan Moore.
His reading of firstly Moore’s comics and later his novels, terminating in the majestic Jerusalem, had imbued Malouf’s archaeology with a magic reality that allowed his understanding and problem-solving abilities to glow in the alchemy of practical solutions unencumbered by traditional wisdom.
And while there had been occasion where he had been able to trade these skills for passage food and lodging, his physical journey south to the great shit-hole of London had not been smooth; the pervading lack of brotherly love for a man of his complexion meant that his progress had been fraught with violence and paranoia. He’d lost hearing on his right side and had been captured and escaped more times than he cared to remember.
Grim reality proved Moore’s time-bending travel technique between the two cities a fiction, and Malouf had been forced to be present for every mile, every minute, every bump in the desolated road.
What should have been a 24-hour walk had taken a week via bristling gangs of feral dogs east of Milton Keynes; a wide detour around the heavily defended boundary of St Albans; the wastelands of North London and culminating in a scramble through the no-mans-land that carves a path east to west from the blackened rubble of Kensington and Buckingham Palaces to the skeletal remains of the abbey and Westminster itself; the sons and daughters of Syrian and Iraqi refugees had finally succeeded where Fawkes had not. It's a short southward walk along the riverbank to Lambeth bridge, it being the furthest east one can cross the Thames on foot without being executed, across and then back north along the riverbank to Waterloo, his pockets jingling with scraps of evidence; sketches of working parts; nuts and bolts; chips and cards; talismans of travel in the devastation.
At the encampment in Waterloo Station, he joins up with a bedraggled band of refugees fleeing the tyranny of the north and west and after a day’s rest they set off east for Lewisham.
They push, drag and carry prams, carts and bicycles to transport their pitiful bundles of valuables, a picture that echoes down the centuries of displacement by religion, invasion and famine.
Crossing the intersection at the ruins of Southwark Underground Station, a man in a hi-viz vest is hit by a single exploding sniper bullet, his red mist and offal remains add a fresh wet layer to the Jackson Pollock tarmac.
Scattering, shaken and afraid, they soon regroup in the back streets, then head south to Elephant and Castle and turning left they head south east along Old Kent Road towards New Cross and over the hill down to Lewisham and the relative safety reputed to exist within the boundaries of the neo-socialist South East.
At Lewisham Station they are processed, their skills and intentions assessed and housed temporarily in the hi-rises there.
After a month employed in the servicing the network of emergency diesel generators that litter the enclave, Malouf is given passage South East; handed a worker’s chip and a token for the Tollkeeper before being bundled into an antiquated electric bus panelled with adverts faded to illegibility. The bus carries him east along the artery, stopping every so often to collect more passengers.
They reach the Medway Tollbooth an hour later.
They disembark and the bus circles the roundabout and heads back west.
They are led down the embankment by a series of gaudily painted arrows bearing in decorative script the legend “This Way”.
They cross the rusted track long bereft of trains this side of the crossing and line up at the tollbooth nestled under the flyover, a rambling construction of wood, plastic panels and chunks of tarmac lifted from the remains of the motorway.
Malouf hands over his token and the tollkeeper, one-eyed squinting, hands over a large backpack.
“Working clothes, boots, toiletries and some books – hope you like historical fiction cos that’s all I got left”
They cross the bridge, standing to one side to allow the produce laden lorries to pass them in the opposite direction, it’s a long walk to the sheltered loading bay built next to the tracks on what was once Nashenden Farm.
Passing the steam locomotive enshrouded in hiss, Malouf is enthralled by its mechanical beauty, its shining practicality and brutal potential energy waiting to reverse its train of carriages, now empty except for him and his fellow travellers, back along the track to the loading shed at Ashford; a journey longer than one would imagine; a journey through time.
The Kent Downs, fertile bread basket, a collective of farmers, fecund turned black earth; the warm south winds; the light both natural and artificial; the sound of chickens at dawn.
At the siding in Ashford Malouf and six other new workers climb down from the train and are processed by a silver-haired woman who reads their chips and directs them to various waiting vehicles. Malouf alone is loaded onto the back of an antiquated pickup and transported along progressively muddy roads to a farm that consists of multiple rows of opaque greenhouses. He is directed by the pointed finger of the silent driver towards a gate where he is welcomed by a smiling teenager and directed towards a bunkhouse whose gable end is emblazoned with a green hammer & sickle superimposed on a red marijuana leaf.
Those engines - firstly obfuscated by the microchip and subsequently made all but obsolete by the advent of battery culture – but they radiate, for Malouf, an occult halo of magic and wonder.
He’d come across them first at the age before he could read, on the cover of a pulp science fiction paperback rescued from the shelves of his father’s workshop. He’d hidden the book under his shirt and smuggled it to his bed to be consumed in private.
Later, while Arabic was spoken exclusively within the small, damp flat his mother had managed to secure after they came to Northampton, his obsessive reading ensured that his English improved logarithmically, and as his grasp of the internal 3D world inherent in the design of machinery became firmer so too his consumption of archaic technical manuals scrounged from charity shops increased.
Living in and frequenting the library in Northampton he couldn’t help but become aware of the legacy of its local scribe and chief mythologist, Alan Moore.
His reading of firstly Moore’s comics and later his novels, terminating in the majestic Jerusalem, had imbued Malouf’s archaeology with a magic reality that allowed his understanding and problem-solving abilities to glow in the alchemy of practical solutions unencumbered by traditional wisdom.
And while there had been occasion where he had been able to trade these skills for passage food and lodging, his physical journey south to the great shit-hole of London had not been smooth; the pervading lack of brotherly love for a man of his complexion meant that his progress had been fraught with violence and paranoia. He’d lost hearing on his right side and had been captured and escaped more times than he cared to remember.
Grim reality proved Moore’s time-bending travel technique between the two cities a fiction, and Malouf had been forced to be present for every mile, every minute, every bump in the desolated road.
What should have been a 24-hour walk had taken a week via bristling gangs of feral dogs east of Milton Keynes; a wide detour around the heavily defended boundary of St Albans; the wastelands of North London and culminating in a scramble through the no-mans-land that carves a path east to west from the blackened rubble of Kensington and Buckingham Palaces to the skeletal remains of the abbey and Westminster itself; the sons and daughters of Syrian and Iraqi refugees had finally succeeded where Fawkes had not. It's a short southward walk along the riverbank to Lambeth bridge, it being the furthest east one can cross the Thames on foot without being executed, across and then back north along the riverbank to Waterloo, his pockets jingling with scraps of evidence; sketches of working parts; nuts and bolts; chips and cards; talismans of travel in the devastation.
At the encampment in Waterloo Station, he joins up with a bedraggled band of refugees fleeing the tyranny of the north and west and after a day’s rest they set off east for Lewisham.
They push, drag and carry prams, carts and bicycles to transport their pitiful bundles of valuables, a picture that echoes down the centuries of displacement by religion, invasion and famine.
Crossing the intersection at the ruins of Southwark Underground Station, a man in a hi-viz vest is hit by a single exploding sniper bullet, his red mist and offal remains add a fresh wet layer to the Jackson Pollock tarmac.
Scattering, shaken and afraid, they soon regroup in the back streets, then head south to Elephant and Castle and turning left they head south east along Old Kent Road towards New Cross and over the hill down to Lewisham and the relative safety reputed to exist within the boundaries of the neo-socialist South East.
At Lewisham Station they are processed, their skills and intentions assessed and housed temporarily in the hi-rises there.
After a month employed in the servicing the network of emergency diesel generators that litter the enclave, Malouf is given passage South East; handed a worker’s chip and a token for the Tollkeeper before being bundled into an antiquated electric bus panelled with adverts faded to illegibility. The bus carries him east along the artery, stopping every so often to collect more passengers.
They reach the Medway Tollbooth an hour later.
They disembark and the bus circles the roundabout and heads back west.
They are led down the embankment by a series of gaudily painted arrows bearing in decorative script the legend “This Way”.
They cross the rusted track long bereft of trains this side of the crossing and line up at the tollbooth nestled under the flyover, a rambling construction of wood, plastic panels and chunks of tarmac lifted from the remains of the motorway.
Malouf hands over his token and the tollkeeper, one-eyed squinting, hands over a large backpack.
“Working clothes, boots, toiletries and some books – hope you like historical fiction cos that’s all I got left”
They cross the bridge, standing to one side to allow the produce laden lorries to pass them in the opposite direction, it’s a long walk to the sheltered loading bay built next to the tracks on what was once Nashenden Farm.
Passing the steam locomotive enshrouded in hiss, Malouf is enthralled by its mechanical beauty, its shining practicality and brutal potential energy waiting to reverse its train of carriages, now empty except for him and his fellow travellers, back along the track to the loading shed at Ashford; a journey longer than one would imagine; a journey through time.
The Kent Downs, fertile bread basket, a collective of farmers, fecund turned black earth; the warm south winds; the light both natural and artificial; the sound of chickens at dawn.
At the siding in Ashford Malouf and six other new workers climb down from the train and are processed by a silver-haired woman who reads their chips and directs them to various waiting vehicles. Malouf alone is loaded onto the back of an antiquated pickup and transported along progressively muddy roads to a farm that consists of multiple rows of opaque greenhouses. He is directed by the pointed finger of the silent driver towards a gate where he is welcomed by a smiling teenager and directed towards a bunkhouse whose gable end is emblazoned with a green hammer & sickle superimposed on a red marijuana leaf.
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