February 8, 2006
CAMP Bling alongside Priory Park in Southend is not only a misnomer for its shabbiness, but is also a waste of time and of little useful work for the inhabitants of this temporary hamlet.
What exactly is being saved? An emptied archaeological hole in the ground of some long-departed old mediaeval personage who may have not been a very nice individual anyway, perhaps a bit of a bully!
Just because you sit around all day preening your dreadlocks doesn't make you a spokesperson child of the Earth!
It doesn't mean that you are right every time does it? What about the rest of us?
Who gives a monkeys about archaeology if it means getting to work on time. Do we sit there in the Mondeo in gridlock thinking "Hmm, look at that empty grassy knoll space, nice to see a bit of greenery even though it means I shall get the sack for continual late attendance!"
England's map has changed and developed over the centuries. How many historical sites have been concreted over without us even knowing of their ancestral existence?
What is more important, the past or the future?
Life is ongoing and has to be adapted to, with all sorts of measures appropriate to the needs of the modern day.
Camp Bling will be a temporary glitch of people who like those before them will not even warrant a paragraph in any future historical document.
They will be disposed of like the land they squat on for a bag of coins.
Ten years on, and we shall be looking for yet more ways hereabouts to ease the passage of our way to travel to work and back. It doesn't really matter!
The history part will always be there. It's today that really matters isn't it?
TREVOR MURDIN
Fleming Crescent, Leigh