"There is strange to walk in a town. Something is strange in the faces of people who live all their lives in a town. For their lives are full of the clock and their eyes are blind with seeing so many wonders, and they have no pleasure of expectation or prettiness of wish. Good things are heaped in the windows all round them, but their pockets are empty, and thus they suffer in their minds, for where they would own, now they must wish, and wishes denied soon turn to a lust that shows itself in the face. Too much to see, day after day, and too much noise for peace, and too little time in a round of the clock to sit by themselves, and think".
Richard Llewellyn wrote 'How green was my valley' in 1939, and like me, was English born, but spent some time in Wales.
I read this only a few years ago, and at that time I was heavily involved in retail developments, some of which were in Cardiff. I love the narrow Arcades there, and although they were probably not the safest places to visit back then, it is not difficult to let the imagination run wild.
The passage above just jumped out of the pages, and I even copied it and stuck it up on the wall in my office, because it still encapsulates street life today.
6 comments:
That was written before the advent of credit cards.
Very 1939s. But it clearly seems not to have occurred to the writer that sitting day dreaming all day long in the middle of an empty field in the middle of nowhere would not really contribute to the production, distribution and sale of all those wonderful things in the windows.
Sorry - that should of course nave been "1930s".
wv: doggon - got that right anyway!
You're right of course Elecs.
In fact, you've summed it all up, so I'll just wander off, whistling a tune and wondering what Mrs S is cooking up for the evening...
Oh yes Reevers! There was an awful lot of vavel gazing going on, but I wouldn't have gone down a coal mine for all the beer in Kent.
And we had three coal mines then, and I saw what happened to them a few years ago.
But gazing into shop windows with no money is a bit near at the moment; hence the renewed interest.
Vavel...!
Sod it - Navel!
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