by Doreen Joy Barber
Feet sticking to the floor, you squeeze past customers to collect the diaspora of empty glassware to be returned to the bar, to be baptized in the hot water of the glass washer and to be reborn again as a vessel for ale, lager, wine or rudimentary cocktail. You think about when you can be reborn. You think about when you can have a shower to wash off whatever the hell is black and sticky on your arm. [read more...]
Removing his coat, he breaks through the buses and levers himself over the railing that divides Upper Street. Dismounting, he smiles at me drunkenly, then jigs into Angel’s welcoming mouth.
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...]
… it’s all been downhill since they stopped wearing capes, you know…
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by James Hunt
In one hundred and four days I will be forty years old. Tonight, I am standing in a hall in north London with my arm around someone, pretending to be happy. Meanwhile, across town in Kilburn… is the one I really want to be with, again.
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Number One
OSIDGE
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Oooh, Argos! she squealed, teetering on the seat to press her face to the window as we ground up Kentish Town Road. Unamazed, her mother pointed out it was Poundstretcher.
by Jude Rogers
On the way to Ferry Lane, you find a car park outside the industrial estate. Blue, red, white, silver, gun gold. Two teenagers are in the front seat of a Hyundai Sonata, kissing. They break off; the girl bites his ear just below the earring. The boy laughs, brushing steam off the windscreen. [read more...]
photo by Roger Till
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by Jude Rogers
He found her on the railway line. Her hair was bright yellow, the colour that children paint sunlight, tied in thick bunches around her small, cold cheeks. She wore a blue shirt, as brilliant as a summer sky. In her left hand, she held a small bunch of daisies. [read more...]