Brokun Britun Extract

Lenny Gottlieb- Found Photograph

 "   We were marooned, engineless and alone, in the shadow of the Brownlands Heritage Colliery & Themepark. A grim-looking FauxVictorian tower loomed over us, topped with what looked like an enormous bicycle-wheel. The buildings were simulations, of course - frames dressed to appear old and ruinous - but there was something sinister and unutterably alien about the architectural mock-ups and the starkness of the landscape that surrounded them. They unsettled me in some way. I had to remind myself that none of this was real, that they were just harmless, backwards-pointing signifiers, plywood representations of some long-gone culture that was as incomprehensible to me as the Paleolithic Era. I could barely imagine it. Had human beings once toiled in such inhospitable conditions, browbeaten and exploited by pitiless union bosses? 

    The pixelated face of Lady Thatcher, saviour of UK Coal, smiled down from a large animated flatboard that stood defiantly in amongst the mounds of fake anthracite. The hoarding’s motion- or audio-sensors spotted us milling around the Zapruder and Maggie T’s head swivelled slowly to confront us. “This country’s not for turning!” it boomed in a pompous Iron Lady avec-accent VoiceFont, then began reciting a list of its corporate sponsors."

- Nice piece of scorched earth fiction extract from Kek-W