DERELICT SUNDAY ON WEDNESDAY

After a day of gale force winds and lashing rain, it was good to wake up this morning to blue skies and sunshine.  I could hear Mr. HCB and his breakfast buddy, Keith, downstairs, so decided to pull up the duvet and have a few more minutes in bed - it being a men’s breakfast - their monthly get-together! 

I wanted to go out and do some shopping, and the place I chose just happened to be next door to the now derelict Madison Hotel.  I had wanted to take this for sometime, after the “ferocious fire tackled by dozens of firefighters" (according to the local newspaper) in July 2016, but we were always going somewhere else when we passed it, so today, I parked the car and then walked through to the site.

The large gates were open, but there was no-one in the Ranger Hut parked in the grounds, so I took out my camera and proceeded to take one or two photographs.  There was a car parked near the Ranger Hut, and as I clicked, the driver’s door opened and someone shouted “What are you doing?”  I walked over and told the guy, who said he was the security guard, that I just wanted a photograph of the hotel and explained about Blip - so he said it was fine and I had his permission to get a little closer.

When I had finished, I came back towards the car and he wound his window down and chatted to me.  He was obviously not English, so I asked where he came from and he told me Pakistan - he was a really nice guy, and I told him that only a few minutes ago, I had been messaging a friend of mine who also lived in Pakistan.  Always good to be on the right side of security guards!

The hotel had been closed since June 2014 and was becoming rather an eyesore, but Police thought afterwards, that the fire was started deliberately, and 6 young men were arrested in connection with the blaze, which was seen for miles around, with black smoke billowing high into the sky.  We live about two miles away and I remember we could smell the acrid smoke.

So here is my Derelict Sunday Blip on Wednesday - three years on and the place looks even more of an eyesore, but we have seen large lorries at the site, so perhaps rebuilding work is about to be started, at last.

In other news, Mr. HCB’s plants were not as badly damaged as he first thought, but he has spent the morning re-erecting the small greenhouse at the side of his glass greenhouse, so hopefully it will now be sheltered from the winds that still seem to be affecting us.

“For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.” 
Wole Soyinka
Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World