Leicester's Zone of Alienation

Today I undertook an eerie journey into the Zone. It was quite unplanned: I was swept along by circumstances. I spent the morning reading, and suddenly realised that I was late posting my brother's birthday card. Because Ne'erday came on a Sunday, I had one day less than I had thought. I went to the local post office, to find I had missed the last collection there. It claimed there was a later collection at Campbell St collection office, an old haunt of mine. I walked to Campbell St, to find that there wasn't after all a later collection there. The sign on the wall there said there was a 7.30 pm collection at the Post Office building on the Meridian Business Park, which is a desolate place out on the edge of town, next to the motorway junction, where I would never willingly go. This was especially true since the place is vast, and the sign gave no clue as to where the PO had its shed on Meridian.

I set off later in the afternoon, in the company car I have recently been provided with, after years of not driving. It was a trip down memory lane. There is a peculiar sense of deja-vu involved in driving again after several years, following routes that used to be familiar, but now aren't quite. Down to the great 'square roundabout' I went, which I used to traverse daily ten years ago, but now I struggled to select the correct lane in the darkness, though it seemed hauntingly familiar.

I drove across in the direction of the Meridian Park, which of course is not a park at all, but a vast collection of sheds. I was unsure of which turn-off to take, knowing only that if I went past, I might overshoot by miles up the dual carriageway. So I took the first turning, and found myself in the Grove Business Park, which isn't a park either. It is a set of large square buildings set far back behind car parks, virtually identical to Meridian. It was quite deserted in the evening dark. These places are quite eerie after office hours, with their miles and miles of abandoned buildings. Oddly reminiscent of Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation, the Zone abandoned by people due to the radioactivity. Occasionally another car whizzes past, some other fool behind the wheel. I chugged round the site at low speed trying to read the dim signs. Though there are tall lampposts everywhere, wasting vast energy reserves, they create only a dim light, as the place is so widely spread out. Few of the companies have thought to illuminate their signboards. Why should they, when all legitimate visitors will have been provided with an electronic map?

Eventually I concluded there was no way through to the Meridian Park, and left the way I came. Navigating unfamiliar high-speed roads is much more difficult after dark, and I wished I had come earlier. I found myself accidentally heading down towards the motorway junction, and felt a spasm of fear. Was I ineluctably on my way to Loughborough or Lutterworth? I quelled the panic by remembering that the main motorway junction had its own roundabout. I did a U round it and eventually found my way back

I entered Meridian by its South entrance. It was virtually identical to Grove, except much larger. There was absolutely no clue to the location of the Post Office. I drove round endlessly, seeing no soul, and few parked vehicles except for juggernauts. After driving for miles, I eventually found the collection point. A completely dark building with a few red vans parked outside. It had the gloomiest car park of all the ones I had seen. The place to post letters was far from obvious. I walked round the building and eventually found a letterbox, and thrust the card through it with a sigh of relief. Over an hour in hand!

In the darkness, I could vaguely see some writing on the wall under the letterbox. It was white on grey, and quite small. I was just able to read it by shoving my nose against it, one of the advantages of being very short-sighted. It told me that the slot I had just used was not for the public to post letters, it was for delivering mail to the building. I should have used a pillar box outside their other building half a mile further up the road. It didn't finish by saying 'tough luck, pal'. But it should have done. Groan!

I stood around feeling stupid for a while, then decided that for future reference I might as well find the pillar box. I got back in the car and drove on. I found three large pillar boxes at the very northernmost extremity of the park, standing outside a large office building whose ownership and purpose was far from obvious. For some reason I got out and looked at the pillars. They had a sign saying the last collection was 7.30 pm only on weekdays, on Saturday it was 1.30 pm, and these were the last collections anywhere in the area. So the whole trip had been doomed to futility from the start.