For the first time in my life I have taken refreshment and had a meeting in Canary Wharf.
What a strange place it is: alienating and deeply impressive at the same time. It is, for all its massiveness, a microcosm—emblematic of what the British economy has increasingly become. Developed by an overseas-led consortium that went bust in short order and then was part of the new commercial entity that then bought and was itself taken over by another giant a few years later, it houses headquarters of some huge players in the finical world. It was once the heart of the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade into the massive Port of London, but now it deals not so much in the physical realities and tangible fleshiness of nourishment, but in the sophisticated metaphysics of bond trading, derivatives and upper-end wheeler-dealing.
This is far from being a perfect photograph, but I hope it conveys something of the scale and swagger of the place.
What a strange place it is: alienating and deeply impressive at the same time. It is, for all its massiveness, a microcosm—emblematic of what the British economy has increasingly become. Developed by an overseas-led consortium that went bust in short order and then was part of the new commercial entity that then bought and was itself taken over by another giant a few years later, it houses headquarters of some huge players in the finical world. It was once the heart of the Mediterranean and Canary Islands fruit trade into the massive Port of London, but now it deals not so much in the physical realities and tangible fleshiness of nourishment, but in the sophisticated metaphysics of bond trading, derivatives and upper-end wheeler-dealing.
This is far from being a perfect photograph, but I hope it conveys something of the scale and swagger of the place.
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