TOP prompt

Two different versions of my Cottonopolis thingy!

Posted to TotallyOptionalPrompts

LITTLE MISS

Little Miss Cotton Cottonopolis

rocks her baby at the factory

in the cradle of industry.

It’ll soon be noon in boom and bust

And she’s just twenty-four hours ahead

She knows that by this time tomorrow

that the whole world will follow

every single word that she said.

And she said:

We’re going to build a canal to bring

coal to town and to link us to the sea.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build about

two thousand mills each one eight floors high

with chimney stacks that scrape the sky

we’ll power the looms in boom and bust

with the new technology that we trust

and we’ll fuel those steam engines with coal

that we’ll cart up the Bridgewater canal and

the finished goods we’ll send across the sea.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a passenger railway station

and lay tracks to every city in the nation

and build new dormitory towns to house the hoi polloi.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a university

and a new town hall

a free library and art gallery

and public parks for all.

At noon the next day

the whole world laughed

and said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and they copied her by half past three.

And she said:

We’re going to build a ship canal

so ships can come to us

thirty-five miles from the sea.

At noon the next day

no one laughed

or said that she was daft

but they waited and they watched

and the ship canal officially opened in 1894.

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First free public Library, Manchester 1653

First real canal (not river assisted)

The Bridgewater Canal Manchester 1761

First steam powered mill Arkwright’s, Manchester 1783

First passenger Railway Station, Manchester 1830

Manchester Ship Canal officially opened May 21^st. 1894 by Queen Victoria

First Red Brick University, Manchester 1824

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http://www.manchestertourguides.com/tours_industrial.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester

http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/

WHATSIT?

Little Miss Crochet

up from Whatsit?

queues outside the

monastery gates for

bread and honey and

her baby cries for the

milk that she’s not got

and across town the

dark satanic mills

rise up eight floors

above the cut and

the phallic chimneys

tower one hundred

and eighty foot into

the air belching smog

that hurts your eyes

and the bargees down

below are blindly carting

coals to fuel the loom

in bust and boom

and even as the tracks

are going down for the

worlds first passenger

railway station

across the road she still

shares half the basement

with eight children and two

drunken and abusive men

there’s no sanitation yet

they dump and hit and miss

in the river and kill the fish

almost next door to the

Italianate warehouse fronts

of the Nouveau riche that line

in eighteen twenty nine

the streets of Cottonopolis

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Cottonopolis = nickname for Manchester UK in the nineteenth century

Bargee = boatman on a canal barge

Cut = canal

Whatsit? = the countryside