remote cards

Texaco the sign used to say. That familiar logo on a big display, the current fuel prices listed below. There used to be a mini-supermarket to go with it. Almost all petrol stations these days have shops – but some have shops, and some have mini-supermarkets. But of course, now, this has neither. They’ve torn out the pumps, the nubs of concrete plinths remain. This was one of the biggest stations in the area, so its now a big empty concrete space, with a carapace suspended by steel struts. There is a red brick wall along the street line, crumbling now, the remains of bricks at the corners turning to flakes. There is a fence round the property, to stop people getting in, no doubt a safety measure. But a half hearted one for all that, often you’ll see kids in groups in that concrete space, kicking a ball back and forth.

After the Texaco there is one last ghost station in this radius, but its hardly worth mentioning. Just another empty lot now, like the crumbling old bingo hall a few doors up, which was burnt out last summer, perhaps the year before. Two empty spaces, levelled, waste ground now. Proper fences round the sites now, painted and spiked. The occasional digger trawling across the ground as though something might happen at some point. Ok. A word or two about it. Its beside the post office, in the mornings the vans park up on the pavement in front of the station. It used to be a BP one, which crumbled apart. The pumps were attacked, the facings coming off, the guts of the pump open to the environment, all going brown and orange. One of those place you think – next time I pass, I will stop and take pictures – till they throw an 8 foot high wooden fence round it, a security sign. For a while we thought they were refurbishing, doing something new, then the wooden fence came down, metal rails went up, and its sat empty, ever since. I think this one was the first to go, if memory serves.