The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work - Alain De Botton [50]
5.
We walked on to Canterbury. The tourist itinerary advised us to have a look at the cathedral and the remains of a Roman villa, but we headed instead to a residential neighbourhood in the northeastern suburbs, through which the authorities, reluctant to let modernity intrude on the city’s medieval skyline, had insisted on routing the cables. It felt peculiar to see pylons, which not many kilometres back had stepped magisterially across isolated forests, now landing in backyards and gardens and being co-opted into family life, like a stranger who, only moments after entering a house, is asked if he might help to carry the vacuum cleaner up the stairs. Washing was tethered to one pylon, a child’s bicycle leaned against another. The electricity for Trafalgar Square ran over a group of deck chairs and an encrusted barbecue set.
Eight pylons later, however, the line was back in the wilderness. It bisected the vastness of Clowes Wood, then swung west towards the marshes of the Thames estuary. We walked for three hours in the rain until the line took us to the edge of the town of Sittingbourne, where we decided to stop in the hope of finding something sweet to eat. It was a place where, as often and inexplicably happens in small communities, everyone had chosen to enter the same profession – in this case, hairdressing – as a result of which most enterprises appeared to be close to bankruptcy. Luckily, we found a teashop advertising homemade cakes and what was termed an Old World atmosphere, and took our seats at the back. How cheerful one would have needed to be in such a place in order not to regret existence. A woman wearing a historically styled bonnet arrived with a pot of tea. ‘I’ll let one of you be mum,’ she declared – which for a time prevented either Ian or me from taking the initiative.
She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving behind what seemed to be her daughter, a girl in her late teens who, also sporting a historical bonnet, was sweeping the floor with an expression as distressed as it was beautiful. Despite the counterweight of two centuries’ worth of romantic art and song crystallising the desire to escape the darkness of small towns, Sittingbourne remained for her an insurmountable foe, as stubborn as the congealed sauce which she was doing her best to wipe from the floor – her struggle representative of a greater, losing battle against the resistant forces of her life.
We drank our tea, paid the bill, and continued on to the town of Lower Halstow, where, as the evening tightened its grip, we took rooms in a hotel adjacent to a pylon. It was to be an uncomfortable night. Trying to fall asleep only served to confront me with an obdurate wakefulness, but any attempts to get up at once brought me face to face with a yet deeper exhaustion. At two in the morning, I switched on the light and took a formal decision to read until daybreak, so as spitefully to acquaint the wakeful side of me with the full consequences of its insurrection. Unable to concentrate on anything of substance, I looked in the drawer of the bedside table and found a panoply of brochures. They revealed that the hotel, which one could otherwise have taken for an aberration, in fact belonged to a chain with affiliates in thirty-four countries. Comparable charm and service were promised as far afield as Denmark and Venezuela, the entire globe seeming promptly smaller and more compromised as a result.
It was at least a relief to know that every one of these hostelries was connected to an electricity network. At that very