Big Yellow Taxi

‘The Council voted for what?’ asked Joni sharply, coming home and draping her school tie over a chair. It was May, and it was raining. Summer seemed to attract rain in Aberdeen, if anything.

     ‘We lost,’ said Dylan glumly. ‘They’re going to gut the Gardens.’ Joni’s lips twitched slightly at the alliteration, then she frowned.

     ‘You might think that two-hundred-year-old trees had some kind of a voice… heritage and all.’

     ‘As for a philanthropist- what is one, really?’ said Dylan, hands in pockets, staring out at the rain. ‘Someone who builds hospitals, perhaps. Not someone who destroys a city centre park just to put up more wretched shops and a car park.’

     ‘Talk about a mind of metal,’ said Joni, her day’s attempt at Higher Biology almost forgotten. ‘They should have gone for that theatre to one side of it, if they had to develop it at all. How many people really want this… development, anyway? Do they really think ruining the centre of town will work, when shops are dying on Union Street, just a stone’s throw away?’

     ‘Ah, it’s all about greed,’ said Dylan dismally, watching the rain pour down the windows with an air of detachment. ‘Money, money, money.’