Channelling

I hate it, I tell W., the terrible channelling around the building works. He'd hate it, the rat-runs for pedestrians. You have to rush, head down, among the crowd. To rush and have to watch your footing, because the crowd moves quickly.

Oh sometimes some foreign students will slow it right down, they'll promenade, as they do back in Spain or Malaysia; they reclaim the path (the non-path, the channel) talking and laughing with friends, and paying no heed to the pent-up walkers behind them.

Everyone wants to be somewhere else, except the Spanish and Malaysians. Everyone's pressing on headlong into the future, which is only a future of absolute control. Headlong and with heads down, in lock-step, staring at the pavement, staring at their feet and the backs of the feet of others… 

Where are we going? They're driving us on like dogs. Like rats. This is how they'll destroy us, because they will destroy us. This is how they'll wear us out, channelling us through the campus till we drop.