Pretty Preston

There are really ghastly things in Preston, and the multistorey carpark here is one of the very worst. It's right in the middle of town, it's built of the most brutal concrete, it has a shape that picks up nothing, echoes nothing, respects nothing in its environs, a lure only to people with needles looking for a dark hole.

What provides redemption here? - what is the magic that turns one of the most grotesque pieces of urban anti-architecture East of the Soviet-era hunger circuses of Bucharest? Is it PaintShopPro, softening the brutality, giving the cast of pastel to the colours? Or Julia, visiting from Cumbernauld? Or is it that sweet smart short marchy mackintosh she has had the foresight to bring with her (along, perhaps, with a toothbrush)?