Notes from the Island

The Island welcomes everybody. Every day many visit and thousands pass close by, though few notice it. It is a place of brief encounters, of buried secrets, of moments glimpsed in rear-view mirrors. A brief pause on a journey. The Island has no border controls, no prisons, no buying and selling. Is it a utopia? Perhaps it could be, a sanctuary of non-interference amidst the surveillance cameras. The Island, London SE14 - much more than just a traffic island on the A2, New Cross Road.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Ants

Human visitors to the Island may sometimes imagine that they are the only life there, apart from the plants in the flower boxes. They are wrong. Beneath the surface of the island there is a whole colony with thousands of tiny inhabitants. I became aware of this today as I followed a trail of ants across the island to the hole from which they emerged - a sure sign of an ants nest. Following the trail in the opposite direction also led me to stumble across the suspected site of Pirate Paul's treasure box (see previous post).

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