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.
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