by Matt Haynes
Although obviously the stupid machine couldn’t actually see her. Probably a good thing too: right now, she must look every one of her eighteen-plus-forty-odd years. Such an awful day. All the financial stuff… she’d just never taken an interest. Never had to. And now here was this… this computer telling her she couldn’t buy a small bottle of red wine without “approval”. She hadn’t known they made them so small, not till she’d seen the display. [read more...]
Sadly, despite all the hoo-ha, the internet never really caught on in Deptford…
[see more...]
by Jack Lawrence
“… there was just, like, a word in my head. You know sometimes when you’re dreaming there’s a word that keeps coming up over and over? But it wasn’t a word, it was… it’s hard to describe. Words squashed together, I suppose. ‘Ustawaooystawa…’ I don’t know – something like that. I couldn’t make it out, it was gibberish. [read more...]
“Sorry, mate,” says the man on the footbridge, turning aside to let me cycle past. “Cheers,” I reply. He nods, tight-lipped, then continues urinating onto the Blackwall Tunnel Southern Approach.
by Matt Haynes
They smile for photos;
Their shoulder-mounted rifles
Brush the toddler’s hair. [read more...]
The Song of the Olympic Binman
by Matt Haynes
I am a binman for the council
And I walk the back roads,
Searchin’ in the dark for another bag to load.
I hear we mustn’t use our bin lifts,
I hear you will not like their whine,
And the SE10 binman must be gone by nine. [read more...]
Outside on the pavement, the man with the mobile is growing exasperated. “Seriously, babe, you can’t miss it!” He steps back, wild-eyed, surveys the façade. “It’s like this big… red café…” [see more...]
by Matt Haynes
Man: Gee, hon, what is that thing?
Woman: What?
Man: That round thing.
[read more...]
I had a bit of Nadine Dorries moment at the Cutty Sark last week while looking at a display of ships’ figureheads; for George Osborne, it seems, has cocked a snook at all this trendy defogeyfication and had himself immortalised not simply on canvas, but large-as-life in carved and brightly painted wood. [read more...]