London Transport Apologises No. 3
Customers on Platform 2 should stand well away from the platform edge as the approaching train has had a really bad day. [read more…]
Mar 082013
From back issues
Feb 212013
In Esmeralda, City of Water
In a disused Southwark churchyard, an invisible city is made visible in neat lines of chalk. [read more…]
Feb 142013
by Howard Colyer
Eleanore feared that she would be buried alive, she feared that she would be stuck in some chamber underground or under the sea; mines and submarines troubled her, though she had entered them only in her imagination: but she had a vivid imagination. I’m cursed with a vivid imagination, she would say, and look at the ground in despair. And she would imagine things, and almost all of them bad. [read more…]
Feb 042013
Who’s Going To Drive You Home Tonight? by Jude Rogers
I feel snug in the back, so I ask him his name. “Reg. Pleased to meet you. And you?” I tell him and we talk about that song by the Beatles. We share details for a while, give each other pocket-sized versions of our life stories: his family in Wales, how long I’ve been in the city. Then I ask him how long he’s been out here. How long he’s had the badge. How long it’s been since he had his blue book. [read more…]
Jan 272013
by Rachel Stevenson
I suppose one day Joanna will come to me and say: “We’re getting a place together,” and “we” will no longer mean she and me. And I’ll be living on my own with a cat. I wonder when a girl living on her own with a cat stops being fun and la la? When do you cease bringing boys home just to kick them out next day? Trying to get the man to stay on a Sunday to share the croissants because you’re sick of eating them all yourself? [read more…]
Jan 202013
by Matt Haynes
If, on nearing the top end of Gray’s Inn Road, your response to the deepening pond of filth sloshing round your hush puppies is to lift your eyes heavenwards in search of spiritual sustenance, then you’re in for disappointment. For stiffly mounted on a pinnacle with his sceptre pointing skywards and his bare toes gripping a weighty ball is this cocky young lad making a most ambiguous gesture. [read more…]
Jan 132013
London Transport Apologises No. 2
London Transport wishes to apologise for the fact that, due to earlier passenger action, all Bakerloo Line trains are currently hiding in a big shed in Willesden and refusing to come out. [read more…]
Dec 192012
As staff sweep up, a blue-haired Japanese girl sits in McDonald’s window, ear to mobile, lips unmoving, two dark wet smudges fixed through glass on somewhere that’s not Pentonville Road.
Dec 112012
by Matt Haynes
Although ostensibly a celebration of rampant free-market capitalism, Monopoly stifles those very instincts that should engender success by insisting council planning departments impose draconian building regulations that allow for the construction of nothing but small green houses or big red hotels; you don’t get the chance to open, say, a department store or computer showroom, or to have a small parade of bakers, greengrocers and shoe repairers. [read more…]
Dec 072012
On a brisk Sunday morning a gentleman in a long velvet morning coat and top hat rides a tiny pink-painted bicycle through the gutter on Lower Clapton Road.