With that in mind, here’s a photo of Luton. In 1985.
(Hit a motherlode of boring postcards at a local charity shop; sometimes it's the greater pleasures - family and friends; Christmas - but sometimes it's the tinier ones).
Many people think of Luton with great fondness (at this time
of year especially); this is a complex, ambiguous emotion known as Lostalgie. Of course, Luton in the
1980s had its dark side: while everyone was guaranteed a job and low-cost
housing, there was also not much freedom, in fact it was one of the world’s
most heavily surveilled states. Worse:
from the early 1960s until November 1989, Luton was forcibly separated from
neighbouring Dunstable by a barrier that residents would, from time to
time, attempt to tunnel through with often fatal results; the ‘Luton Wall’ is a looming presence
in the British ‘kitchen sink’ films of that era.
No, sorry [checks notes]... I didn’t mean Luton, at all; I meant East
Germany.
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