Ballardian

Matt over at Mountain 7 has posted an interesting account of Whiteley Village in England, with accompanying photos, that will be immediately familiar to lovers of Ballardian landscapes:

“Wikiedia: ‘Whiteley is a new town in the county of Hampshire, England, near Fareham. The town straddles two council districts: the borough of Fareham to the south and the City of Winchester to the North and East’.

They make it sound all so benevolent: ‘built to alleviate housing problems in the south east’ –it’s a cover: Whiteley sprang out of the ground overnight in the early 1990’s, fully-formed, dreamed into being by a unique organism, the collective unconscious of middle England posing as some animist geomancer with a grudge, a fallen demiurge building a joke palace to soothe its seething bitterness. Seen from the snake of the M27 (only one road in, one out) it appears to be a sylvan retreat, all oaks and gravel drives, but get into its stodged veins and its labyrinthine qualities mesmerise and suffocate you, sibilant whispers choke the air…

Apart from the self-contained bricked-up horror of the housing estate (school, doctors, chippie, managed woodland- microEngland theme park) there is the galumphing Solent Business Park with its anonymous businesses and the lurid glamour of the Whiteley Village Factory Outlet Shopping Centre. There’s really no need to leave. Why would you want to?”