Over the road there are women, sewing, visible through the open door. It is lunch time, they are still working. Yesterday when I peeped over on the hot afternoon, they were in there with the door closed, windows boarded up, but I could hear the drilling of the presser feet slamming thread through silk onto steel in time with voices humming.

A man comes over and shuts the door in silence but with force, peaking out into the Leicester skyline like a villian from a film noir. I hide behind the water tank on the roof. Hopefully he doesn’t see the smoke coming from my Lambert and Butler. The smoke is blue and silver with a potent stink. I can feel the stench of them on me and on my peeping, it feels wrong to see this, wrong to know it is happening, wrong to see his face of anger, wrong to know the women have no voice but for the soft hum of sounds that came from the east.

The painting in the header is called Factory from 2002, I made it in Leicester. It is oil on Paper. 40cm x 70cm