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…]
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…]
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…]
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…]
by Sno Flo
Spotting johns is easier. I see one in Ryman’s, buying pens. He’s fifty-odd, tall and bladder-bellied, with a sundae-swirl of fifties hair and a hot-pink polo shirt. Pink crocs too, the unsavoury bastard. I walk out. [read more…]
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…]
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…]
by Simon Sylvester
So I pick him up from the Camberwell depot, depot, and he’s there with his flat cap and his dreads and his fingerless gloves, leather for better grip, see, mouthing off with all that niggatalk, but I don’t dig his vibe. Not at all, man. I reckon he tries too hard. I reckon he be days away from being busted. [read more…]
by Sabrina Mahfouz
The eldest ties her sister’s scarf
back around her hair –
not too tight. [read more…]
by Sabrina Mahfouz
I think we might argue more
if you move to North London –
it’s just, y’know, so far.
[read more…]