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Soho Foundry, Foundry Lane, Smethwick, West Midlands: photo by Oosoom, 2007
In the dumb foundry, through which your body passed,
stamped and cast, smelted and molded, with eyes wide open,
very long ago
stamped and cast, smelted and molded, with eyes wide open,
very long ago
Industrial furnace, paper factory, built 1907, now unused, Krepa, Poland: photo by Mohylek, 2006
Later, that evening, turned half-past-five, he came into yard of Prescott's foundry. In that shop they were casting now and blast of the cupola roared and made air buzz all round him. From being used to this he took no notice but he did move away from where he had stopped from not watching his step. Because he had halted close to the great coffin shaped lumps of metal sunk in the ground. He thought Alf Igginbotham would be in one of those three, other two did it before no one could remember. With Alf the management had tried to make the men cast with molten metal Alf had suicided in, but of course the men didn't have that, they dug his coffin for him here, like he had done for those other two and poured into it the metal he was in. (The great heat there would have utterly done away with him.) There he was in that lump of metal, thirty ton to a penny, but then likely as not he'd risen in dross to the top of the metal, and like dross does when you ain't casting, it'd stuck to the sides of the ladle or gone back to the bottom as they pulled the metal out. So Alf had gone out of it after all, though in different shape to what he'd gone in he thought and Joe chuckled. An' that's about all that man ever was, or any on 'em -- dirt, he said in mind.
from Henry Green: Living, 1929
Later, that evening, turned half-past-five, he came into yard of Prescott's foundry. In that shop they were casting now and blast of the cupola roared and made air buzz all round him. From being used to this he took no notice but he did move away from where he had stopped from not watching his step. Because he had halted close to the great coffin shaped lumps of metal sunk in the ground. He thought Alf Igginbotham would be in one of those three, other two did it before no one could remember. With Alf the management had tried to make the men cast with molten metal Alf had suicided in, but of course the men didn't have that, they dug his coffin for him here, like he had done for those other two and poured into it the metal he was in. (The great heat there would have utterly done away with him.) There he was in that lump of metal, thirty ton to a penny, but then likely as not he'd risen in dross to the top of the metal, and like dross does when you ain't casting, it'd stuck to the sides of the ladle or gone back to the bottom as they pulled the metal out. So Alf had gone out of it after all, though in different shape to what he'd gone in he thought and Joe chuckled. An' that's about all that man ever was, or any on 'em -- dirt, he said in mind.
from Henry Green: Living, 1929
This post dedicated to Duncan Jones
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