Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven: The Planning Application

The planning application for the coastal school was submitted in April.

He had spent the weeks after the April visit preparing it — the drawings in order, the specifications complete, the design and access statement written. He had written the design and access statement on three consecutive evenings. He had written it slowly, the way he wrote letters to correspondents: attending to the words before committing them, finding the accurate description before moving to the next sentence.

He had written about the two attending conditions first — the wide attending and the still attending, the east window and the corner. He had written about the coastal light in its seasonal conditions: the October grey-green and the November concentrating gleam and the January flat grey and the March sea remembering motion and the April light alive in pieces. He had written about the children as the practice's most accurate correspondents — the girl who had given the coastal vocabulary, the corner children who had faced the blank north wall for forty years, the moving children who had crossed the room by the south wall because the threshold was a lit condition.

He had read the statement back on the third evening and thought: this is the correspondence in the form of a planning document. The correspondents translated into the required language — the attending visits and the pocket notebooks and the girl's vocabulary made into the words that the planning authority required.

He thought: the planning document is a letter to the authority. The authority is the next correspondent.

He had sent it on a Tuesday. He had driven to the county office and submitted the drawings in their tube and the documents in their folder and the application form and the f*e. He had handed them to the planning officer at the desk — a woman who had taken the tube and the folder without opening either, who had logged the reference number and handed him the receipt. He had driven the hundred and forty kilometres home with the receipt in his coat pocket.

He thought on the drive home about all the planning applications the practice had submitted — the three-generation house and the library extension and the community centre and the smaller works between. He thought about the planning authority as the correspondent the practice could not choose — the correspondent assigned by the process, the reader of the drawings who had not asked to read them and who read them in the official language of the permission rather than the attending language of the visit.

He thought: the planning authority reads the section differently than Joseph reads it.

He thought about the difference. Joseph had read the east window width first and then the corner and had stood in front of the drawing without speaking. The planning officer would read the section for the compliance — the setbacks and the heights and the materials and the drainage and the parking and the neighbour relationships. The planning officer would not read the section for the everywhere-at-once or the stays or the threshold attending. The planning officer would read the section for whether the building was permitted.

He thought: both readings are necessary. The practice needs both correspondents.

He thought about the practice needing both — the attending reading and the official reading, the inside view and the compliance check, the vocabulary of the light and the vocabulary of the regulation. He thought about the planning authority as the correspondent who protected the attending people's right to the honest building — the compliance that made the construction possible, the permission that allowed the correction to be built.

He thought: the planning authority is the correspondent who makes the building real.

The waiting after the submission. He had been through the waiting before — the community centre application, the eight weeks, the planning officer's questions about the materials and the drainage and the impact on the neighbouring properties. He had answered the questions in the correct language and received the permission and the build had begun. He knew the texture of the planning wait — the practice continuing its other work while the coastal school application moved through the authority's process.

He returned to the drawing board. There were two other projects in progress — a small house extension for a couple whose children had grown and whose rooms needed reconsidering, and the early correspondence for a village hall in a market town thirty kilometres from the office. He attended to both. He made visits and wrote letters and sat at the drawing board in the May mornings and drew.

But the coastal section was still pinned above the drawing board. He had not taken it down. He looked at it each morning — the east window and the corner and the south bench, the three attending conditions, the section complete in ink. He looked at it and thought about the planning authority reading the drawings in their offices and thought about the girl who would be ten in January when the school was built and the corner children who had faced the blank north wall for forty years.

He thought: the section waits for permission.

He thought about the section waiting — the ink drawing pinned above the board, the correction proposed but not yet permitted, the east window at forty centimetres and the corner with its north light and the south bench at the threshold all waiting for the authority's correspondent to read them in the compliance language and find them acceptable.

He thought about waiting as a condition the practice knew well — the waiting after the submission, the waiting after the letter, the waiting for the correspondent's answer. He thought about the practice's correspondence as always containing the wait — the letter sent and the reply not yet arrived, the drawing submitted and the permission not yet given, the building not yet built and the correction not yet received by the attending people for whom it was drawn.

He thought: the practice spends a great deal of its time in the between-time of the correspondence.

This thought stayed with him. He wrote it in the pocket notebook: the practice in the between-time of the correspondence. The letter sent and the reply awaited. The drawing was submitted and the permission awaited. The building is complete and the attendance has not yet arrived. The practice is always in the between-time between one correspondence and the next. The between-time is not only the condition the community centre was built for. The between-time is the practice's own condition.

He looked at what he had written.

He thought about the community centre and the weight-bearing room and Raymond on the Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday and the between-time gathering and the limestone floor receiving the seasonal light. He thought about the practice that had designed the room for the between-time now understanding itself as a between-time practice — the practice that lived in the gap between the drawing and the building, between the letter and the reply, between the correction proposed and the correction received.

He thought: Raymond and the practice are in the same condition. Raymond waiting for the between-time people and the practice waiting for the permission. The honest room holds both.

He wrote to Joseph that evening: the application is submitted. We are in the between-time of the planning process. I have been thinking about the practice as a between-time practice — the work always in the gap between one correspondence and the next. I think this is why the community centre was the right building for this practice to design. The between-time room was drawn by a practice that has always lived in the between-time.

He sealed the letter and was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven