except it doesn't anymore. A deserted mothership becalmed on the valley's floor, sheep pa**ing through the car park, padlocks rusting on the gates and birds nesting in the breathless vents. The work happens elsewhere now, sometimes all day - men pressing and dipping in the lifting bays, locking out elbows, rolling a bicep up an arm then away, or just kneeling and bowing to the benediction of a lateral pull. Pumping iron under strip lights, they take the strain of another afternoon shift with screwed tight eyes, pneumatic sighs, while at the window - still the rain, rolling off the clouds in sheets across a brushed-metal sky. Ebbs vale, 2002