I was just in woolwich, taking a walk down by the river, trying to think about a script I’m working on. I find the landscape there captivating: today it’s rather breezy with a mottled grey sky, so the area felt somehow dramatic. You can now walk around the area where the old munitions factory once was – it has been renovated, converted into trendy apartments and office spaces, so that you now get odd juxtapositions of history and modernity, life and death, old and new. Here and there, glimpses of the grimy, industrial past thrust their way through into the present. Information boards dotted about the place tell you that, for four hundred years, that was site of labour, noise and toil, where thousands of people worked to supply the British empire with the tools of conquest. Yet now the place is at peace – clean and modern, a place of polished plastic, metal and glass, save for the building work for crossrail. Then, heading homeward along the Thames, the shining spires of Canary Wharf on your horizon, one passes the old boat slipways. They’re derelict and crumbling with moss, but were once where mighty boats were built and stocked; places which must once have once thronged with activity so cacophonous you could barely hear yourself think, but are now silent save for the sound of lapping waves, and forgotten. Such places intrigue me, fascinate me; they are part of why love this city. Only here can you find such contrast, such juxtaposition; only here do past and present clash so violently, colliding to perpetually propel this ever-changing maelstrom into the future.