by Matt Haynes
The caffs round King’s Cross are full of downcast Scotsmen eating breakfast. Outside O’Neill’s, others stand in kilts and saltires, pints in hand. Soon, it will be time to cross the Euston Road and catch the train back home. [read more…]
The sending of the first Smoke book to the printer is celebrated with a trip to Erith.
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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…]
In the tombless gloom of bombed St Mary’s churchyard, between the Elephant and the looming shell of a dead hotel, he carefully unfolds a music stand, and uncases his trombone.
Sadly, despite all the hoo-ha, the internet never really caught on in Deptford…
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by Matt Haynes
Despite, by law, occupying no more space than a horse and cart, each shelter could seat thirteen cabbies without recourse to contortionism or immodesty. An attendant sold simple hot fare, and the cabbies, in return, promised not to gamble, drink, swear or reveal how thirteen grown men could fit into such a small space and yet still go home to their wives without blushing. Not for nothing were windows frosted and moustaches kept trim. [read more…]
Please Do Not Touch The Walrus No. 1
A fantastic new series in which we attempt to catalogue some of the amazing things you can’t do in our fabulous capital city. Today: touching walruses in Forest Hill. [see more…]
by Jack Pandemian
School nights have no meaning until September so we roam, my friend and I, within the boundaries of our Zones 4-5 school bus passes. Brixton is too far, Zone 2. Camden is unimaginable. But out here there is a club above a pub where every Saturday the walls run with snakebite sweat, and where the carpet sucks lecherously at your boots as you lift one foot and then the other to the jangling sound of L7. [read more…]
With hair gelled to spikes and skin still pink from blade and Lynx, the Sidcup boys in their crisp white Saturday shirts all look vaguely like friends of Frank Lampard.
