I lived in a small room in a semi-derelict old fever hospital with a corrugated iron roof on the muddy banks of the polluted River Wansbeck. It was a few miles away from the coast where the beaches were black with sea-coal. There was a huge coal-fired power-station which I could see in the distance from my room, with high chimneys pouring white smoke and steam into the wind off the sea. At night the rising steam was lit by the arc-lamps that stood over the mountains of coal beside the turbine halls, over which I could see bulldozers crawling beneath the stars.
