9 FEBRUARY 2008, Page 32

Gas

Seeing the country from a train I’ve grown convinced its gasholders in fact are used to house the spite and gloom of post-industrial towns.

Arriving anywhere, I credit them for signs, barometers of bunkered call centres’ black ids, the rancour of each closing time.

Colourless and odourless, a leak betrays itself in a guard’s scowl, a strip-lit waiting room’s flicker. Whenever I do alight each city reinventing itself creaks like a warming glacier; money, the old green-keeper, has brought a springy, turf-like step to the pavements, but can’t deal with gas.

Even on the leeward streets the shoppers seethe and spend like mad.

Everybody wears a mask.

Paul Farley