Been a while – the grass has turned and the leaves further, their changes covering the fellsides and watchig over the marbled heather - it’s beautiful most mornings, damn cold but beautiful, when I rise close on dawn and climb in the car for the journey to work 20 miles away, heading east out of the Lakes toward Penrith –

Yet in recent days I've noticed there’s a sinister turn to my place of work -

Oasis Whinfell they call it – a loco-paradise resort for the estranged British holidaymaker and other sub-species; open all year round bar xmas day - a spectacular forest hideaway, populated by prefab log cabins (throwbacks to some Thoreau-esque identity? If only!), dense pine and spruce trees; Fly Agaric mushrooms in the damp shade, the smell of healthy leaf mould in the air - guests ride bicycles everywhere (the multitude of people carriers and 4x4’s left back at the giant car-park for the duration of their stay); and inside the ‘village’ zone, with it's air of profligate safety and service, there are bars and cafes and activity centres all housed in the giant glass and steel bubble

– a Westworld of the north –

Gently at first:

waterfalls piped in through the exterior walls cascade over mock rock beside the Italian restaurant; lush palms and foliage greet you there; even birds get in and flit from cable to girder in the glass heaven, twittering as they go -

But, it gets nasty -

behind the façade, excuses are made for non-deliveries; there’s puke in the staff toilets that looks like alien frog-spawn; the lifeguards all have STDs; and the staff toilet doors and walls are covered in racist graffiti, with daily updates - there's a linguistic tribal battle going on between the Poles, the Japanese and the redolent English thugs who populate the lazier side of the workforce, gauging thmesleves by thier boredom and the amount of fags they can get through in one sitting -

somebody's been pilfering or vandalising the faces of the staff photo's - it's alkmost comic the seriousness with which that is taken but the evident racism is ignored and (in some cases) encouraged - it's the theme of a thousand jokes backstage here, where anything not deemed 'British' is frowned upon and deliberately misunderstood -

1979 all over again - creepy -

and the holiday makers come and go oblivious, their plastic weekends are kept well away from all this; even nature to a certain degree is disinfected for them - the bunnies are encouraged, but the hawks are on timetable (you can pay to see them if you like) -