Free Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project by Iain Sinclair

of construction convoys. A heron dance of cloud-scraping cranes. Flocks of cyclists, clustering for safety, dip and swerve like swallows. Hard-hats and yellow tabards monkey over the jungle scaffolding of shrouded towers, the exposed steel ribs of emerging stadia. Grass has the irradiated sheen of an ancient toothbrush. Early risers, in the privilege of first-use recreation, a smudge of sun burning off the fug of pollution that hangs over a pre-Olympic city, fall into quiet conversation.
    Ice-cream kiss of almond blossom. A bridal abundance of cherry: pink-and-white froth. Yellow pompoms of japonica. In a corner, under a high wall that gives away the previous identity of this public park as an energy-generating plant, retired workers sway, stiffly and slowly, in t’ai chi ballets.
    I’m fascinated by the elderly Chinese couple who circle, for more than an hour, around the perimeter fence of the newly laid carpet of a sports complex achieved in advance of the Great Event. They are there when I set out and still there, moving at the same brisk unhurried pace, when I return. The pavilion and the new pitches are a compensatory gesture towards those who must endure years of drilling, dust, demolished schools and theatres, banishment from functioning but inappropriate housing developments. The block-building, assembled overnight, has no vernacular element, it could have been designed anywhere for any purpose; blinding whiteness complemented by the deep blue of the interior, an aspirational colour we must learn to associate with the culturally unifying message of the Games.
    The Chinese woman walks, right shoulder to the fence, in a clockwise direction, while her husband short-strides the other way. When they meet they do not acknowledge one another, not so much as a nod or a wink. My impression is that he is less enthusiastic about the regime. He wears a hooded monkish top and looks like a sixty-a-day man who has given up his addiction, reluctantly, after receiving bad news. A drag of burnt air, one final smoke-chase, is his reward for completing the hour’s penance. The woman, in flat cap, arms pumping, is remorseless, gaining ground with every circuit.
    ‘The opportunity has come for them to lift up their heads,’ said Chairman Mao. ‘The authority of the husband is getting shakier every day.’
    The comrade walker pistons forward on her self-imposed generator: by force of will, she drives the engine of the city. At her side march unseen battalions.
    And this is East London, four years short of that seventeen-day corporate extravaganza, the ‘primary strategic objective’ to which we are so deeply mortgaged. Haggerston Park, E2, a modest enclosure factored out of war-damaged terraces, the vanished Imperial Gas, Light and Coke Company, has long been an oasis. It was launched as a public park in 1958. Its scandals are old scandals and have no bearing on the current frenzy for makeovers, wooden obstacles for training circuits, laminated heritage notices. Spanking new carpets are woven for clapped-out football pitches, changing rooms erected to replace shower blocks opened in the dark ages by Wendy Richard of EastEnders fame.
    Back in the 1820s, Gas Company funds were misappropriated, illegal payments made to council officials, stock accounts falsified. In more enlightened times, when bureaucratic malpractice is exposed on a daily basis, hidden parks win prizes for visionary planting schemes. Unnoticed, rough sleepers in thin bags utilize the stone terrace of a café that has been shut for years. Late risers, having nothing much to rise for, burrow deep into dismal kapok-stuffed cocoons, while dog-accompanists use ballistic devices to hurl soggy yellow-green tennis balls for their hunt-and-retrieve pets. Designated wilderness zones quote wild nature.
    Artificial grass is better than the real thing, tougher. False chlorophyll glistens like perpetual dew, the permafrost of conspicuous investment. The rough sleepers are not