Raddick Plantation, Dartmoor, England by Ian D Smith
Invoice Department
The building was decaying.
A room full of coffee-grinder calculators
Was destined for museums
Doing the twentieth century.
The man who kept
The toilet stocked with toilet rolls
Was tipping people off
About the coming computers.
I laboured on with the old system
As gardener after gardener
Whose invoices had been ditched,
Rang to complain.
The boss figured in December nothing grows,
So no one got a penny,
Except for the small guys—
A couple of grand
One Christmas eve
To a weed-trimmer in Neasden.
No questions asked and no PCs,
Just gravity taking the big guns
To the bottom of the in-tray.
Lateral Moves 24, 1999
1984-86 “A look at the clothing manufacturing industries around Stockport and South Manchester.” By John Darwell
Commissioned by Stockport Museums and Art Gallery Service.
Photograph reproduced by kind permission John Darwell.com.
Cy Forrest 
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