THE A689 east out of Sedgefield is a fast dual carriageway. It has a pleasant enough view towards the Cleveland Hills but your eyes have to battle through the smoky chimneys of the chemical industry to see that far.
It has none of the dramatic hills that roll and plunge a couple of miles to the north; instead, it's a gentle downward undulation as County Durham gradually peters out into the salt marshes and seal sands that Teesside is built upon.
The road is, though, spanned by an elegant cyclepath bridge, the County Durham Gateway Bridge, opened in 1991. It is supported by a bright blue pole and has a graceful pair of orange and green wings flying from its side.
It was designed by artist Peter Fink whose complementary commission has this week been erected nearby. It appears not to have a name yet, although its critics are already calling it a "monstrosity, vulgar and ridiculous". However, the Angel of the North was condemned before its arrival, but now no-one would remove it as it adds immeasurably to the entrance to Tyneside.
Similarly, Darlington's Brick Train was controversial but now, with hindsight, the only controversy should have been that it was neither big nor accessible enough. It should never have been built behind an unkempt hedge on the edge of a windblown parking lot.
The new thing between Sedgefield and Wynyard is a column of coloured light. 'Thing' is a very carefully chosen word, because it is not a sculpture as no part of it is sculpted. It is more of a construction than an installation although, when it is lit, it may be an illumination.
This thing, then, is 60ft high. It has four blocks of nice pastel colours: mauve, sea-green blue, pinky-red and goldy-yellow. "County Durham" is spelt out vertically down the side. It looks like an oversize petrol station price board. In fact, it stands opposite an abandoned garage which some travelling yobs have turned into an installation of their own. "No asylum seekers", they've painted in green on it.
As I stand beneath the thing, the flashpast-blast of the cars tearing at my tie and a pair of partridges creaking like rusty gates in the green corn of Old Acres Hall Farm behind me, I am struck by its sheer pointlessness.
The angel rises from the old pithead baths of an area built on coal; the train rumbles around a town built on railways. But the thing of colours has been erected with no obvious relevance to the landscape around it. Yet is pointlessness bad? Does everything have to have meaning?
We live in an increasingly homogeneous age. The residential estates that chomp into our countryside all appear to be built of the same two-tone bricks, the red relieved by a line of buff. Our town centres are full of the same plate glass windows belonging to the same chainstores; our shopping centres all have the same mock-marble floors.
I peered into Dressers on High Row in Darlington this week and was disappointed to see it reduced to an empty concrete shell. Even the wonderful wooden staircase appears to have gone.
It is only the bizarre architectural oddities that we have inherited from previous generations that separate one town from another; it is only the strange curios erected by the roadside that separate one interminable dual carriageway from another.
Of course, there will always be more pressing calls for the county council's money than a £60,000 illuminated thing. But how do you put a value on a speck of intriguing individuality in today's bland, mass-produced consumer world?
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