Free The Planner by Tom Campbell

world was his private joke. As jokes go, it had been a poor one, but it wasn’t even that any more – he knew that now. For a truly private joke is a philosophical impossibility, meaningless and self-defeating unless there is someone to share it with. No, the world had ceased being a joke and was now something much worse: it was reality. It had to be reality, because no single solipsist could be so deranged. A fuck-up on this kind of scale needed a lot of manpower. Not even the most violently insane planner could have dreamt up the City in such detail, with such cruelty and indifference. No, nobody was responsible – that was the fundamental problem. This wasn’t the work of planners, this wasn’t 1970s Sweden. It was the work of humanity. Only humanity, in all of its raw, unprocessed energy and enthusiasm, could have produced this disaster.
    He walked through it all, he saw through it all. The landscape was provisional and disposable, a thawing cacophony, and it wasn’t clear if the city was unravelling in front of him, or being ambitiously rebuilt. That was the thing about economic crashes – they were indistinguishable from economic booms. Whatever the circumstances and financial constraints, whoever the developer or planning authority, the style was always the same: neo-apocalyptic, for every building was now made on the basis that the world was about to end, that however much it may have cost, however technologically innovative and courageous, it would need to be pulled down in the next business cycle.
    The architects had got particularly carried away this time. Over-excited by the money from Asia and their new software packages, they had designed impossible shapes with computer-generated angles. Then along had come the civil engineers, the people who actually knew what they were doing, with their powerful machines and smart materials and deadly confidence, even when given the battiest of architectural plans. And the towers that they made soared above him, greedily penetrating the heavens, interfering with weather systems, communicating with satellites, oblivious to the fact that the ones who had granted planning permission all lived on earth.
    Head bowed, still weighed down by the books but walking faster than ever, he continued past Moorgate. There were no skyscrapers in Nottingham, and probably not many book launches either, but maybe that was a good thing. The City, the whole of London, had detached itself from the rest of the country, and become instead a global capital for culture and commerce, for vanity and greed. You could only succeed here if you could forget everything you’d ever learnt in England. But he wasn’t like Felix or Alice: he was essentially a provincial, with provincial aspirations and fears.
    Another twenty minutes later and at last he came to the river, to the bridge, where London opened up to him and became three-dimensional. There was physical geography instead of all the other kinds. The entire wealth of the city had once been based on the waterway below, but now it was without economic significance, and humans had lost interest in it. Meanwhile, on the south side of the river, the new towers were coming, taller than ever, rising in clumps above the train stations, fracturing the skyline and heralding a new era of prosperity and ruin. He pulled out his phone. There was a text from Alice. It had taken an hour, but she had sent one: ‘I love Felicity. She’s fab. U at a book launch?!’
    He stopped along the bridge and looked down into the darkness. If he smoked, he would have lit a cigarette at this point, but he was far too old to take it up now, and so instead he had little option but to send another text to Alice: ‘She seemed very nice and is big fan of yours too. Hope all is good. Fancy going for a drink?’
    This time, the answer was almost immediate. ‘How nice. V busy at the moment in work + life. Will email you all soon to arrange something.’
    So that was that –