Even in ruins, the building suggested tea urns, sandwiches, and neckties. The remains of a padlock lay in a grin on the grass, and the doorway was a black hole.
I walked on mossy planks into a hall laced with dots of black mould. The air smelt of damp laundry locked in a bin. I wished I had a dust mask.
But neon graffiti covered every wall, and did not disappoint.
You can scan the whole building like a painting. Layers of paint have built up over the years, and faded colours run alongside scarlet and lime a few days old.
Maybe I looked too long. The more I stared at the tags and drawing, the more I found organised coherence. A circle at least a decade old had pointed triangles on top that cannot be older than Christmas. Similar shapes formed claws and teeth from the ceiling to the rotting skirting boards. And if you stepped back, and scanned from the broken stage to the shattered windows, they pointed towards one corner. This gave the impression that the whole room shrank to that point.
A few loose floorboards poked up in frozen waves from this spot. They lacked the dirt that smothered the hundreds of cousins. I walked over, my feet clacking like dice on concrete. I had to see why.
The beams weighed closer to fencing than balsa, and scored red marks into my palms. With a clatter they revealed a divot in the ground underneath. Some sort of cellar or cubby hole, but with earthy walls that stained your fingers brown.
Climbing in would mean a feet first dive with no warning of the bottom. I decided instead to flip my phone round, and scan the innards with the torch.
A heap of pineapples greeted the sterile beam. These were not the fresh produce of their sister outside. Instead green mould turned them into droopy caricatures that wept juice.
At first I thought they vibrated. But then I saw hairy legs, and chunky bodies, and realised a huge mass of brown spiders covered the pile. They crawled over the skins and crowns, and delved into innards that must have the mushy texture of boiled swede.
Something crunched on the path outside. I whipped my head out of the hole, ashamed in case anyone saw me. No voices called to ask who was there. No other feet echoed round the hall. But this was no longer a place to sit and think.
I stepped over the pineapple on the path back, glad not to have touched that spiky crest.
Dunon is a beautiful place, and shows what we can achieve with building destined for the bulldozer. Please consider your personal safety however. This is not a place for children. And do not wrench up any floorboards.
::They must like the sweetness Barbara. I've seen insects crawl over sugary snacks and spoiled fruit all of my life. And yet their work looked so methodical. And is it spiders who like sweet stuff? Isn’t it wasps and flies?
Who is storing pineapples in a burnt out scout hut?
Anyway, beautiful art. I’ve highlighted a pair of ears in the photo, so you can get an idea of the collage.::
