imber by katharine eastman

Yesterday a friend and I drove on over to Imber, the forcibly evacuated village on Salisbury Plain where the army now run around shooting at each other. I don't drive any more because I am on economic strike and won't give an unnecessary penny to this government, any government, though I do eat too much chocolate and go to the cinema and pay all my necessary bills and mainly put my litter in bins, so it is a pathetic invisible rebellion.

My favourite ex did the driving and she hates it and panics and it does always make for a thrilling ride - you know how fast drivers are so scary - well slow drivers are even more scary. But to drive on a silent Easter Sunday sunny morning when there is no traffic about and to cross across Salisbury Plain - it is something I will never forget.

We didn't know what to expect at Imber and a friend had told us that we'd missed the "bus day" and we'd not be allowed in, but it was an open day and it was indeed open and they were expecting us. Imber was evacuated in about 1942 - the inhabitants were literally given about £12 and told to buzz off and never come back, and though they protested for a long time, they never won anything.

War eh, what is it good for ? If I was expecting anything, I was expecting something like an inland Walmington-on-Sea, still preserved with Captain Mainwaring's desk in the old bank's window. Nothing like. Almost all the original houses had been demolished and in their place are modern (1970s) half-built brick houses with no windows or anything, like a crap little housing estate. All that was left was the church, and it is just like any other church.

But it was a great day because of the sunshine and the views across the Plain and the knowledge that you don't really own anything in this country and you are as nothing. We sat in the churchyard and had a great picnic. And then we went home - again passing the car park and toilets etc at Stonehenge, all modern and crap and regimented and dead and the hunched sad shoulders of the people traipsing from their cars to the payment booths and their tedious children which they wished they'd never had and their inescapable jobs waiting for them on Tuesday and the death at the end of it and all the time forever-now.

recorded today, photo Imber churchyard yesterday