Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
His Prospectus is extant. Edward Garden's unfinished house came into it,
and an affiliated interest, "_Porth Neigr Omnibuses, Ltd._," about which
Mr. Tudor Williams knew something. There were great swathes about the
natural beauties of the situation, and lesser ones (the Syndicate pruned
them down behind Terry's back) about the Thelema Idea. And there were a
number of other things that are impossible, yet facts in the amazing
History of Flotation. It is no good saying these things cannot happen
when they happen daily. Had you or I bought shares in the "_Thelema
Estate Development Company, Limited_," we should merely have bought, you
and I, shares in that moonshine that poor, gentle, rapturous, cat's-paw
Terry Armfield drew with freehand and French curves on his bits of paper
and presently spread out in such a lunatic fashion over the sandhills of
Llanyglo. Come, before we leave this dim chapter of the twilight of
Llanyglo's forebeing, and see what Terry did.
Starting at right angles from the Porth Neigr road, a couple of hundred
yards short of John Pritchard's farm, there runs straight down to the
shore a street of rather more than a quarter of a mile in length.
Crossing this street in the middle runs another street, not so long, but
unfinished. These two streets intersect in an open space or circus
perhaps a hundred yards in diameter. The first street is called Delyn
Avenue, because of the mountain that commands it. The second one is
called Trwyn Way. The central circus is called by the names of the four
Crescents it comprises. Farther back from the intersecting points are
other streets. They also are named.
But do not suppose that these streets and Crescents and Avenues and Ways
are streets in any ordinary sense. They are twenty-two and thirty-five
foot roads, metalled, crowned, drained, and with a good stone kerb
running parallel on either side. But there are no houses. There is not
even a pavement, no, not a vestige of one, flagged, macadamed, cobbled,
nor of any other description. There are no standards for gas or electric
light; there are no standards even for the names of the
thoroughfares--for you can hardly call those things standards--those low
wooden boards, rather like the "_Please Keep off the Grass_" notices in
a public park, that inform you that this is Delyn Avenue or that that is
Trwyn Way. Exactly as it was all drawn on Terry Armfield's tracing-paper
and envelopes and memo-heads, so it is now drawn on the Llanyglo
sandhills, with strips of stone kerbing for pencil lines and the
wind-blown sand where his india-rubber has passed. Lie down on the
sandhills with your eyes at the level of the kerbs, and, save for those
eighteen-inch-high street name-boards, all disappears. Or if you care to
climb the Trwyn you can see it all rather well from there....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account