by Hilaire
Don was wonderfully straightforward, I was discovering. When I’d asked if he’d film me, he’d simply said: “Sure, why not?” No incredulity, no awkward questions. Unlike – but I shut down that thought. In truth, I didn’t care whether there was any film in his camera. I wanted a witness, that was all, and someone to haul me out if I unexpectedly got into difficulties, as the local press would have it. [read more…]
by David Marston
There, at the end, was a tent. And not just a tent. An upturned steel drum was acting as a rainwater butt. White brushed ash marked the site of a fire. Clothes hung from a bush, drying in the morning sun, and a rolled-up tarp suggested some more extensive waterproofing had recently been in use. Someone was living under canvas just outside Lewisham town centre. [read more…]
For The Greater Good by Matt Haynes
Mother, by the time you read this I will be in Tegucigalpa.
Don’t worry, I’ll be fine; I just wanted to let you know
That I have buried the body of Nigel Farage
At the back of Uncle Terry’s garage
In Bow.
[read more…]
Leyton Lights by Matt Haynes
Once, on a night flight to Los Angeles, our pilot told us over the intercom that if we looked out the right-hand window we’d see Las Vegas. So I pressed my face to the Plexiglas and saw a strip of pure light blazing out from the Nevada desert like someone had just skimmed sodium pebbles across a vast black lake. [read more…]
by Jacqueline Downs
I don’t know what they call this place; it seems to have several names. Norwood. Upper Norwood. Crystal Palace. Who knows? Who cares? All I know is I most certainly didn’t expect to find myself here after the Losey and Pinter, the serious stuff. Another bloody ruffian, although this, too, is – in my view – serious stuff. I am to be murdered with a poker, I believe. By a child! Brilliant. Subversive. We all know that children can be little fuckers. [read more…]
A Thousand Black Fishes by Jude Rogers
The sky like a kingfisher’s flash.
The new Eastway overlooking the old, solid river.
[read more…]
A Short Journey Downriver by Mark Sadler
Twice a day, when the tide is high, the Thames floods the broad, low-ceilinged underground channel from which the Granville emerges. During the autumn and winter, as the temperature drops, these back surges create localised fogs that linger along Upper and Lower Thames Street. The river that London buried alive rises like a ghost through the porous layers of paving to reassert its claim upon its former overground course. [read more…]
“I’ve heard there’s a new park here, where is it?” demanded the man in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park information centre in the middle of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
by Lucy Munro
I’ve been re-reading Sherlock Holmes. Not in the doorstopper collection with almost see-through paper I bought when I was thirteen and lugged to school and back for a blissful fortnight, immersed in its foggy miasma and gleefully drinking in the details of Holmes’ not-so-secret drug habit, but in a £1.99 Wordsworth edition comprising everything up to his demise at the Reichenbach Falls, a death from which he was never intended to return. [read more…]
The Ladies’ Pond
by Alison Marr
The swimming ladies of the Highgate pond are various.
Some are old and lean with hard thin arms breaking November ice,
Others are buxom with low slung breasts shifting as they move.
[read more…]