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The problem with losing yourself in these little reveries is that when you surface things are apt to be disappointing. I came up now at Tower Hill and there wasn't a tower and there wasn't a hill.*
There isn't even any longer a Royal Mint (which I always preferred to imagine as a very large chocolate wrapped in green foil) as it has been moved somewhere else and replaced with a building with lots of smoked glass. Much of what once stood in this noisy corner of London has been swept away and replaced with big buildings with lots of smoked glass. It was only eight years since I'd last been here, but were it not for the fixed reference points of London Bridge and the Tower I'd scarcely have recognized the neighbourhood.
I walked along the painfully noisy street called The Highway, quietly agog at all the new development. It was like being in the midst of an uglybuilding competition. For the better part of a decade, architects had been arriving in the area and saying, 'You think that's bad? Wait'11 you see what / can do.' And there, towering proudly above all the clunky new offices, was the ugliest piece of bulk in London, the News International complex, looking like the central airconditioning unit for the planet.
When I last saw it, in 1986, it stood forlornly amid acres of empty warehouses and puddly wasteground. The Highway, as I recalled it, was a comparatively sedate throughway. Now heavy lorries pounded along it, making the pavements tremble and giving the air an unhealthy bluish tinge. The News International compound was still surrounded with sinister fencing and electronic gates, but there was a new maximumsecurity reception centre that looked like something you'd expect to find at a plutonium depot at Sellafield. Goodness knows what terrorist contingency they have allowed for, but it must be something ambitious. I'd never seen a more unbreachablelooking complex.
I presented myself at the security window and waited outside while my colleague was summoned. The most eerie thing about the scene now was how serene it was. The memory seared into my skull was of crowds of demonstrators and police on horses and angry pickets who one minute would be screaming at you with wild eyes and big teeth and the next would say, 'Oh, hi, Bill, didn't recognize you,' and then exchange fags and talk about what a dreadful business this all was. And it was a dreadful business, for among the 5,000 sacked workers were hundreds and hundreds of decent, mildma
:* For about 500 yards along the northern side of the compound, •butting Pe
To keep morale up, the company each night brought round boxes of sandwiches and beer, which seemed a cheery gesture until you realized that the largesse was carefully worked out to provide each member of staff with one damp ham sandwich and a sixounce can of warm Heineken. We were also presented with glossy brochures showing the company's plans for the site once the dispute was over. No two people seem to remember the same things from this brochure. I clearly recall architect's drawings of a large indoor swimmingpool, with unusually sleek and healthylooking journalists diving off a low board or lounging with feet dangling in the water. Others remember squash courts and exercise rooms. One guy I know recollects a tenpin bowling alley. Nearly everybody recalls a large modern bar such as you might find in the firstclass lounge of a wellappointed airport.
Even from beyond the security perimeter, I could see several new buildings inside, and I couldn't wait to find out exactly what facilities the staff had been blessed with. It was the first question I asked my old colleague whose name I dare not confide here lest he find himself abruptly transferred to classified advertising telesales when he came to collect me at the gate. 'Oh, I remember the swimmingpool,' he said. 'We never heard anything more about that once the dispute was over. But give them their due, they've increased our hours. They now let us work an extra day every fortnight without additional pay.'
'Their way of showing they think highly of you all?'t
'They wouldn't ask us to do more work if they didn't like the way we did it, would they?' Quite.
We strolled along the main thoroughfare of the plant between the old brick storehouse and the monumental printworks. People passed like extras in a Hollywood movie a workman with a long plank of wood, two women in smart business suits, a guy with a hardhat and a clipboard, a deliveryman cradling a large pot plant. We passed through a door into The Times editorial suite and I gasped quietly. It is always a small shock to go back to a place where you worked years before and see the same faces toiling at the same desks a combination of sudden familiarity, as if you've never been away at all, and profound, heartfelt gratitude because you have. I saw my old friend Mickey Clark, now a media star, and found Graham Searjeant in his little cave made of newspapers and press releases, some of them dating back to the days when Mr Morris was still making motorcars, and encountered many other friends and former colleagues. We did all the usual things compared stomachs and bald patches and made lists of the missing and dead. It was quite splendid really. Afterwards, I was taken to lunch in the canteen. At the old Times building on Gray's I
It occurred to me that though I had worked at this site for seven months, I had never seen Wapping and was, of a sudden, keen to have a look at it. When I had finished my pudding and bid fond farewells to my excolleagues, I hastened out through the security gates, intentionally failing to turn in my security pass in the hope that nuclear attack sirens would sound and men in chemical warfare suits would begin a sprinting search of the compound for me, and then, with nervous backward glances, I redoubled my pace up te