Sliced from the Block

A bright workshop of a plastics works beside a river estuary in Suffolk on a clear October morning, sunlight through tall windows, a long flat cutting machine with a dark bolted iron frame, on its bed a smooth solid block of layered celluloid in mottled amber and brown, a young woman with dark wavy hair in a light short-sleeved dress and an apron seen from directly behind, face turned fully away, lifting with both hands a thin sheet of wood-grained amber celluloid that curls up into a glossy roll as it leaves the block, shelves and pipes along the far wall, a red bucket hanging on a hook.