The Ash Heap

The valley of ashes, a few years before the fair. Cold, wet, moonlit. In front of you, six metres off, a builders' hoarding runs across the view, higher than you are, with a painted board on it reading Building the world of tomorrow, opens April 1939. There is a gap in the boards with a gate hung in it and warm light behind, and above the hoarding the Trylon and the Perisphere stand in scaffolding against the sky. Between you and the gate a crate, with a box of matches on it and footprints leading to it. Turn away and the ash runs out from under you in the moonlight: a hand cart tipped on its side to the left of the track it left behind, and further round a rusted plate on two posts reading No dumping. Drag the image or use the arrow keys to look around. Striking the matches lights the ash for a few seconds and nothing else; the button Strike a match does the same. The gate in the hoarding is the way back to the front page, and so is the link Back to the zeppelin in the top left corner of the image.