by Mike Loveday
We watch the three of them stand inside the train sobbing. They stand inside the first carriage, facing the closed door at the back of the driver’s cabin. They stand and sob constantly, even when the train eases into each station. They cry to the limits of their lungs because they want everyone on the Chiltern Line to hear, everyone across London, through the countryside, on the roads, in the towns and in the villages. [read more…]
by Matt Haynes
As the doors shut and the train accelerates away from the station, the boy’s father holds the palm of his hand six inches behind his son’s back. The same conversation, almost word-for-word, has occurred at Devons Road, Langdon Park and All Saints (for Chrisp Street Market). Soon, almost certainly, it will occur at Pudding Mill Lane. [read more…]
Number Three:
Lemna Road, Leytonstone [see more…]
I had a bit of Nadine Dorries moment at the Cutty Sark last week while looking at a display of ships’ figureheads; for George Osborne, it seems, has cocked a snook at all this trendy defogeyfication and had himself immortalised not simply on canvas, but large-as-life in carved and brightly painted wood. [read more…]
by Meg Green
A swan is preening in the four foot. Another is standing on one foot on the iron railing. Although Bill has seen swans on the line before, he always finds the whiteness of their feathers startling. They are bigger than he thinks is reasonable for a bird. He draws the power brake smoothly back, bringing the train to a stand before the swans. He knows it is illegal to touch swans. They belong to the Queen. [read more…]
No. 7 South Bank
I think we all know the story behind Coldplay’s Yellow but, in case you’ve forgotten, it seems that frontman Chris Martin was absent-mindedly looking out his window one afternoon when he saw something – the sun, a daffodil, Gwyneth Paltrow, nobody’s entirely sure – which made him stop and say to himself: that’s yellow, that is. [read more…]
by Matt Haynes
Across the road, a window is piled high with what look like stacks of pillows. Grubby white letters on a green awning above it read: Victory Food Stores, Jesus is Lord, Phil.2:11. Beside the food store is a nail salon, then a jeweller’s, a florist’s, and – I stare at the words above the next doorway: Divine Money, Financial Services. Why is that so familiar? Obviously it’s the sort of name you remember, but – where would I be remembering it from? [read more…]
Rumours that recreational drug use at Smoke HQ is now endemic and beginning to seriously impact on the production schedule were yesterday and today meanderingly denied by a spokesdude. [see more…]
by Matt Haynes
It’s hard to believe that it’s over ten years now since I first found myself gazing out wistfully over the Ethelred Estate from the top floor of a house just off Lambeth Walk still part-owned by Lambeth Council and wondering why there seemed to be so many helicopters around these days. [read more…]
“Is the flood returning?” says the board outside Herne Hill United Church; but drivers descending to the plain below won’t be saved, for the temptations of Camberwell Green are many.