Once Upon A Time, Far, Far Away . . . (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Once Upon A Time, Far, Far Away . . .

2:07pm Monday 24th September 2007

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Once upon a time far, far away there was a small but rather tastefully bijou city nestled cosily in a deep-sided valley where the winds sweeping down from the moorlands tingled with the scent of heather and brought wild roses to the cheeks of children playing in the numerous parks and gardens.

The name of this pleasant burg was - ahem - Bruddersford. A charming Northern town with a long illustrious history and a plethora of graceful
19th Century architecture of the highest possible standard. Why, the stone-carving alone was considered by many to be the finest of its type in Europe. These gracious old building were constructed in the local sandstone, which had a notable and very attractive golden, creamy colour.

Ah, Bruddersford! Both a home and a sanctuary to the many and diverse folk who flocked to its restful and welcoming (on the whole, yes, don't bother
posting the usual dross you racist idiots) community. But alas! It also caught the eye of the scheming and marauding Lord Speculator, Evil and Unscrupulous leader of the voracious Flatdweller Peoples, whose strange,
towering homes spread like an angular modernistic rash throughout the North (and elsewhere of course). Fie! (sorry, it is a fable, that's how people talk in fables) cried the grim Lord Speculator, I must have more land, more space to expand my empire!

The wicked Lord ruminated in his penthouse on top of the highest tower in the whole of Leeds, a city becoming notorious throughout the land for Very High And Extremely Ugly Towers, each tower being built by men determined to prove they were indeed, Real Men, with bigger and better, um, equipment than their rivals. Lord Speculator's Tower was 130 floors high and he thought it
very small beer indeed, compared to what he would build in future. But not, he thought , in Leeds. Leeds was passé. Leeds was Old Hat. Everyone and their uncle has thrust their skyscrapers up from Leeds stony soil like a
plague of tottering fungi. The Grim Lord snickered as only Grim Lords can.

Bruddersford, he thought, Bruddersford - it will be mine! Mine! Mine!

But first, he thought, I will throw up a small-ish block of Flats for my people, to show what I will do with the rest of the city, so the citizens (or peasants as he preferred to call them) of Bruddersford could get a taste
of their future, trudging through the empty streets under the watchful CCTV of my great Towers. I'll put the first block on the road into Bruddersford from Leeds, and it will act as a gate-house and a flagship for my impending dictatorship.

And Lord Speculator caused this gate-house to be built. At first, the peasants thought it not too bad in a lumpy, awkward kind of way as it was faced with their beloved Yorkshire Stone. Sure, it had bizarre and
unattractive black glass windows, but hey, the peasants weren't going to be living in it, peering into the grey of a Northern winter from those darkling apertures. Let the strange Flatdwellers do that, they must be radged (local term for 'mad') spending that much cash on a tiny, dim hole of a flat, but that was their look-out. At least, joshed the peasants, it wasn't a Tower!

How wrong they were. The Grim Lord chuckled and ordered Stage 2. Up and up it went, floor after floor of gleaming black glass. Shaped (from some angles) like the prow of a mighty warship bearing down on a rickety rowboat, it reared its mighty Darkness up against the silvery skies, totally obscuring a rather nice view. It's obsidian surfaces drew the eye like a Black Hole, it loomed and bulked with a bully's leering attitudes,
unanswerable, uncompromising, completely bloody unattractive in everyway.

Soon the peasants started referring to this gate-house as 'Barad-dûr' (just having got the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD cheap in Morrisons). There it was, Barad-dûr indeed, the Black Tower, the Grim Lord Speculator's
testosterone-driven testament to a style of architecture wholly at odds with the local surroundings.

Too late, the citizens of Bruddersford howled their distress. How could The Council let this piece of Dark Horridness go up? How? Did they not see the
plans? Did they not wonder how a dirty great big black glass monster like Barad-dûr would actually, like, duh, look in Bruddersford? The City Council send representative to mouth the usual platitudes but lo, the multitudes made rude remarks and the representatives slunk back to their chambers muttering about the ungratefulness of people not prepared to Embrace The
Future and Appreciate The Modern.

So there it is, peasants - I mean, citizens - of Bruddersford. The Grim Lord's thin end of the wedge. Go and view it. It looks especially captivating with Autumn storm clouds boiling up behind it, thunderheads
turning the glittering black glass to dead ashy sheets of cinders.

Welcome to the future.

NB. No resemblance to any actual persons, Dark Lords or cities living or dead is intended in any way at all. This is a work of fiction. It is. Honestly. Uh-huh. Yup. Really. Totally, totally fictional.