STU

Jun 162014
 
Please Pay At The Till

by Steve Lake
But maybe my memory is playing tricks, for working at Foyles in the 80s wasn’t unlike a trip on some fairly serious hallucinogenic drugs. There was, for example, the story of the disgruntled employee sowing seeds into the specially moistened carpets of the rarely-visited Philosophy Department on a Friday evening and returning on Monday to find a small field of cress, ready to be added to his sandwiches. [read more…]

Feb 032014
 
Bored at the British Library

by Susan Harlan
It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m bored. I’m bored at the British Library. So there it is. It seems like I’ve been here forever. I look at my watch: I’ve been here for two hours and eighteen minutes. I figure this means that I can’t leave yet. Two hours and eighteen minutes is not an honest work day. Two hours and eighteen minutes does not represent a good Protestant work ethic. [read more…]

Oct 032013
 
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 Edwardian façade. Inside, leather-jacketed goth girls in fishnets are selling fanzines. Carpets are sticky with beer. The crowd is a mass packed so tight it threatens to burst the walls. [read more…]

Jul 032013
 
Speed Dating in Surbiton

by Sno Flo
Rugged men with frost-nibbled beards were hugging pints and staring at us as if we were quarry shipped in from the Far East to replace local female stock escaped to parts less chilly and depressing, like Kingston. I ordered two rum and cokes, and asked myself the question every speed dater sporting two X chromosomes must: why were we bothering to pay fifteen smackers to meet men when there were so many free ones lying about? [read more…]

Oct 082012
 
Not Seeing The Smiths

by Sean Longden
One night they took me out. Up to Camden: couple of beers, round to visit some bloke from Scritti Politti at his squat, then to Dingwalls to see The Smiths. Walking there, I was amazed to hear the words “Oh – didn’t I mention it? We’re on the guest list.” It was getting better by the minute. I could just see myself back at school telling all this to the handful of people who would actually be impressed. [read more…]

Jul 092012
 
End of Days

by Tom Elkins
In Paris, I saw the word EVERYWHERE spray-painted across the city. Around King’s Cross and Euston I’ve seen a shield or a face, sometimes with the word SIN written underneath. When I see thick rectangles of paint on the sides of buildings, I wonder what’s hidden underneath, what’s been covered up… [see more…]

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