Dark Satanic Mills

When I was a child I spake as a child with broad tinges of Mancunian dialect.
Now once again tucked up in my childhood bed, remembering industrial chimney stacks with plumes of thick, charcoal grey smoke, swirling skywards in tornado spirals.
Cobblestone streets lined with thick black sticky tar ( we called it pitch) utilized as make believe liquorice lollys on discarded wooden sticks, twizzled around like candy floss.
Coal bunkers, dark black cavernous places laden with debris of sooty ash. Cobs of coal would not only keep us warm, as fuel for the fire, on wintry nights but were great armory to slingshot over the backyard wall to land on them next door's metal tin bath, hanging on a rusty old six inch nail. If you were really accurate, a bullseye shot, smack between the two iron rollers of the dusty old Mangle, normally in use for squeezing out well worn, hand washed clothing, earned you a gold stick on star to be worn with great pride as a reward for this not so neighborly sport.
Ragged rope left in a pile outside the Roto Brickworks made great makeshift swings. The street corner lamplights had the perfect horizontal crossbar of green painted metal arms, to sling and tie our hessian rope over, supporting our skinny little bodies as we kicked off the ground and swung out, throwing caution to the wind up our skirts, propelling us around the street lamp in parachute fashion.
How different is the caution of childhood wandering in recent years. Would I allow my child to roam the banks of the River Irk, ratting, or gobble down lukewarm sticky porridge, enabling the day, played out in all manner of made up games, to last so much longer. Daylight hours filled with numerous adventures before dusk. Only the emptiness of hungry bellies would beckon our tired but elated bodies home for tea and shortly afterwards bed. There was no TV to use as an excuse to plead for extra time..
Where are all those dark and dismal mills now, that surrounded our landscape of childhood adventure....Demolished and disappeared forever, as are all manner of things in their simplicity from times gone by. Replaced by air waves of gadgetry, escalating advancement of high technology. A world full of robotic creation to rob all future generation of fresh air and the pure joy of simple adventure played out upon this green and pleasant land.