The dust of the post-war settlement has all but settled and the fifty households of this prefab estate are preparing to go their separate ways. Frayed rolls of black and white squared lino are being rolled out on the garden paths, mouldy drawers prised out of mouldy drawers, priceless Turner and Rembrandt paintings carefully taken down from walls (just kidding on that one), pliers and pullovers packed into ex-army canvas bags, wheat separated from chaff, metal bath tubs and flat irons lifted on to scrap merchants' wagons. Bathroom ablutions and evacuation procedures reveal that The Big Move is already under way.
One (as yet unknown) prefab is to be saved from annihilation and dispatched to the Great Museum of Architecture on the Isle of Sky. Messrs Oblivion and Void - Museum Memory-Curators-In-Chief - will give their welcoming speeches and assure the assembled guests, all dressed in the fashions of yester-year, that these pale pads bent every aluminium sinew to keep their residents warm and dry. Those standing on the balconies will start a gentle round of applause. Our past will be quitely accepted for what it is and for what it was.
The prefabs' elusive presence will continue to be felt. It will tug away at our thoughts, shadow our footsteps, peer over our shoulders, brush against our coat sleeves on lonely days, leave a scent in the crevices of days, query acts of bad faith, and provide some balm and solace when we
find ourselves adrift in shallower and more evasive times.