Have you ever noticed, he suddenly said, almost as if he knew her, that the studs fixing these tube-seat covers in place all look like the faces of startled bears?
Apr 222013
Smoke 5
Sep 072012
Unreal City by Jude Rogers
So we went then, you and I, waiting for the rest of our lives to wake us from the winter. “Come,” I’d whispered on that white afternoon, as your train pulled away to the north and you still stood there on Silver Street’s empty platform, your cheeks iced and bright, your eyes warm, your arms wrapped tight around my ruby red coat. “Come and watch the spring begin with me.” [read more...]
Aug 112012
Through Farringdon’s roof he comes, and hops on. Grey-feathered, stern-faced, a downturn in the beak. He stands peacefully until Great Portland Street. The doors cheep. He alights.
Jul 162012
by Matt Haynes
Whenever the need to fondle something long and wrinkly grew too much to bear – which, after the death of her beloved Albert, was at least twice a week – lucky old Queen Victoria seldom found herself frustrated in the way of ordinary women, for one of the perks of being Empress Of All The Pink Bits was a plentiful supply of pachyderms, gifts from foreign potentates to whom such beasts were, frankly, little more than garden pests. [read more...]
Jun 142012
In a trackside back garden grainy with dusk, somewhere between Dagenhams East and Heathway, a solitary fat boy steadies himself, uncloses his eyes, and shoots one final, match-winning basket.