Peter Rhodes on a vanished city, careless words and discovering that you're not a working person
It's 48 hours since the Budget. If you have not found extra money in your pocket, it merely proves what you feared all along. You are not a working person.
For generation upon generation, the pyramids, palaces and public buildings of Valeriana, the Maya city recently discovered in the Mexican jungle must have seemed the definition of permanence. Their proud and beautiful city would surely last forever. But things change – in this case we don't yet know what – and the city fell into disuse and was swallowed by the jungle.
We clever 21st century folk should not look at the fate of Valeriana as something ancient and rare, but as a continuing process. As wars erupt, deserts spread, floods rage and tides rise, how many of today's big, confident cities will fade into history and out of memory. London? You mean the old sunken city?
As an old poem tells us: “Cities and Thrones and Powers Stand in Time's eye, / Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die.”
