As part of my job the last few years I am required to travel

to our other location. Nothing onerous I travel by bus and

spend on average of one night a month in a commercial hotel.

I did learn that a lot of the people staying there seem to spend

part of each week away from home so I am quite lucky. It did

however focus my attention on the area around the hotel. All

cities seem to secrete these rings of car lots, train tracks,

outlet malls, lots full of satellite dishes, sandwiched between

fast food restaurants, propane tanks and of course hotels

and motels for the weary traveller.  I have not seen them

celebrated a lot in literature but I have not looked

Alain de Botton mentions these areas in some of

his books like "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work" and

"The Art of Travel" but his books leave me unsatisfied.

J.G.Ballard whose early science fiction themed work I love

wrote a number of later dystopian novels set in high rises,

traffic islands, malls etc. and despite the fact I rarely finished

these novels I often think of them when I confront this landscape.

It is hard to take any great stand against these areas they are

part of every city and a necessity it seems to a way of life that

allows many of us to enjoy a greatly expanded life expectancy,

modern medicine, ample food, great leisure activities travel,

security etc.

However their growth strikes me as predicated only on

expediency, economy and convenience. They owe nothing

to grace or charm or beauty or the human spirit. No one

sleeps there but the displaced.

While on the trip I mentioned in my earlier post

we got up early to take the dogs out and I

photographed the area around our perfectly nice hotel. 

At least there was one familiar face and having the

whole family there made it much friendlier.

"I knew I'd have to face my aging

and my death, but not

the death of forests, not of oceans, not the air:"

Mountain Ash without Cedar Waxwings

Robert Pack

"I feel as empty as my mountain ash

without the cedar waxwing here,

I feel the loss, wide as out universe,

of everything that I hold dear?"

Mountain Ash without Cedar Waxwings

Robert Pack

"I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash,

in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of

the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile

graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks,

in the poetry of abandoned hotels."

                     What I believe

                               J.G. Ballard

Perhaps some balance would be nice.