remote cards

The flutter of polly bags catches my eyes sitting at the lights. The bags are looking a bit bedraggled now, how many years have they been there? Wrapped round the nozzles of the petrol pumps. This abandoned corner, which if it had been built after a certain point would have been illegal – there are clear access laws about the access and exit of fuel trucks, of where pipes stick out from the ground, of how a garage is run – this place, stuck in a corner of the road, concreted into the top of a hill, breaks everyone of those. But it’s a dead station now anyway, one of many in this area, it used to be one of the few 24 hour stations – you’d pass late at night and folk out of the pub would be wandering up to the window, or taxis pulling over. No more. Its closed. Even for a while, someone bought it over and did run it just as 24 hour shop, but that’s gone too. Now? Now it’s a car wash, one of those micro businesses that sprung up, another car wash of many that sprung up – populated by Eastern Europeans, sat on boxes looking sad and weathered during the quiet moments, working the production line of soapy cars when its busy. While all around them the infrastructure of an already old station just gets older every day, greyer paint jobs, rustier exposed points. Some of the others have been gutted, reduced to lots with fences round them, but this one remains, particularly abandoned at 7am, ghost station.