Solace and Machine-Life

It was on a programme I watched a week or so ago. Not a particularly original thought, but like all true ones, something you can't quiet shake off. The programme was a documentary set in a 'fried chicken shop' in South London. One of the workers was being interviewed, a thoughtful young man who was studying in England, after moving over from India (I think). He said that life in this country consisted of work and sleep and work and sleep, a 'machine life' he called it. Not an original thought, like I said, but a true one. Just got back from work, exhausted and drained - too many days like this - and I would like to draw or read, but I'll just stare at the TV, wait to go back to sleep, and work, and sleep, and work, and sleep. Machine-life.
I snatch bits of solace on the way home; the sight of an icy-white street lamp down a side road I never noticed before, two old men getting out of a car, looking delighted, listening to the Hunter not the Hunted album by And Also The Trees, and watching the road ahead of me vanish into an imagined distance of poplar trees and drawn-curtain windows in tilting houses.