Over the weekend they demolished three of the cooling towers at Didcot Power Station. The towers were the focal point of the view out of the spare bedroom window in our old house – a view that was a mainstay of my doctoral research. As I wrote, I used to watch the patterns of smoke rising up from the towers. At first, I used to think that they were a blot on the landscape, but over time I came to think that the view would be somehow bare without them (I think that there are still three left, but in a way that’s stranger than all of them being gone).
We’ve moved, so I’ve not seen the view without them, and I’m not sure whether I like that or not.
While I was working, I got into the habit of taking photographs of the towers, with the smoke in different forms:
Fireflies 