Trombone

May 142013

In the tombless gloom of bombed St Mary’s churchyard, between the Elephant and the looming shell of a dead hotel, he carefully unfolds a music stand, and uncases his trombone.

Looking back through the clouds…

Lit by Fury

by Sean Longden
Outside, it betrays its origins as the Regal Cinema, a stark, plain and grimy object from an era when people uttered the words “shopping precinct” as if such a thing were the height of sophistication, and thought nothing of stripping the old Palladium Picture Playhouse of its baroque Edwardian façade. Inside, leather-jacketed goth girls in fishnets are selling fanzines. Carpets are sticky with beer. The crowd is a seething mass packed so tight it threatens to burst the walls. [read more...]

Hell Is Other People’s Laptops

by Dale Lately
You try to picture yourself bedding down here for the night. You imagine making a bit of conversation with the other guy, trying to overcome the intimacy of undressing in front of one another, of negotiating when you’ll switch the lights off and go to sleep. Or maybe he’ll continue all night with his laptop and speed metal. The light in here is either the flat bulb or darkness. You feel a sort of lurch of misery and homesickness, or just sickness. [read more...]