Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias warns: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains. Round the decay /…’. It is not just the ruination of the works of the mighty that are a source of despair. A once fine pier is now a skeleton of rusting metal waiting to fall into the sea. A once palatial cinema is now a closed bingo hall. A once state of the art motor, the apple of someone’s eye, is an old banger pumping out smoke on the motorway. Today’s news is tomorrow’s filler in the recycling bin. In the end our lives become archaeology. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Photo: Aldeburgh, Suffolk, April 2009