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Three stories I won’t write
A boy and his father are playing hide and seek in the gardens adjacent to the children’s museum. The father has been especially successful in concealing himself, and the boy calls out I give up, come out. Then again, I give up, come out.
I’m relieved, perhaps the boy is relieved, when the father emerges from his hiding place. If he had not appeared ( Read more... ) -
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Last Monday, two trains coupled together, twelve carriages and still full: into town, in the middle of the day, from North Kent. Many were young, late teens, early twenties. A party of six had brought gin, fruit juice, cava. Their conversations: you could tell they had grown up together.
Marked over the last few days, but it's been like this for a ( Read more... ) -
It's been a while
The first day of the year, dusk, about three-thirty, near the top of Endell Street. At the foot of a tree, items recently discarded, including a colourful new and unopened pack of pastels. One object when disturbed proves to be a music box, already primed: it emits its tinny, sentimental chimes into the empty street. It feels like a set-up, a scene ( Read more... ) -
Some people, more animals
Late June. A street preacher of the Christian variety is occupying a self-delineated space outside the Salmon, stepping forward and back across the pavement as she rants. We are doomed; she is exultant. One of a passing couple remarks: 'Everyone off their meds now... everyone.' From somewhere just beyond the Sainsbury's Local queue comes a ( Read more... ) -
It's all animals from this point forward
St Pancras: gas holders repurposed as cages enclose new drum shaped residential blocks. That's behind me and before me the canal. It's a weekday lunchtime in summer. A woman passes by on a bicycle and as she does so a small dog leaps from her handlebar basket, into the water. She's dismounting in the swiftest manner possible and serendipitously a ( Read more... ) -
And don't forget he's still up to it
I'm a fifty year old man
And I like it
I'm a fifty year old man
What're you gonna do about it? -
Been away. Not really here now.
The automated announcements on the Luas are delivered in an assertive tone. When she says: 'Please move down the tram', her delivery stops just short of an exclamation mark and despite being appropriately seated you wonder how best to obey her. She declares the stops in both Gaelic and English. The longer, varying titles have the value of a ( Read more... ) -
corners
On the corner the former fire station is occupied by Buddhists; variants of yoga and mindfulness are practised there. The other morning, early, two pale young men were at its entrance, verbally altercating; they were in disagreement and had Taken It Outside. As I passed I heard one to say to the other: "...I hear that, I accept that, but how you ( Read more... ) -
Postcode hopscotch
A Saturday in light rain, and he was lost. He showed me the map on the screen of his phone, but those streets were not near that which we were in. Perhaps he'd emerged from the Underground and the GPS, or the mast triangulation, or whatever it is that allows spatial location of a device, had not caught up from his last detected location ( Read more... )
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