by Matt Haynes
The lorries are starting to move now, rumbling across the deck of the James Newman and onto the ramps that shake and ring beneath their tyres. He is supposed to leave too, supposed to climb the yellow metal steps from the passenger deck to the red metal gates that always remind him of Meccano. There is an announcement over the tannoy, every time a ferry docks, forbidding passengers to remain on board. [read more…]
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.
… despite ample free parking, the Lambeth Walk Sculpture Park is so far proving less than popular with tourists… [see more…]
by Mike Loveday
We watch the three of them stand inside the train sobbing. They stand inside the first carriage, facing the closed door at the back of the driver’s cabin. They stand and sob constantly, even when the train eases into each station. They cry to the limits of their lungs because they want everyone on the Chiltern Line to hear, everyone across London, through the countryside, on the roads, in the towns and in the villages. [read more…]
by Matt Haynes
As the doors shut and the train accelerates away from the station, the boy’s father holds the palm of his hand six inches behind his son’s back. The same conversation, almost word-for-word, has occurred at Devons Road, Langdon Park and All Saints (for Chrisp Street Market). Soon, almost certainly, it will occur at Pudding Mill Lane. [read more…]
Number Three:
Lemna Road, Leytonstone [see 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…]
by Meg Green
A swan is preening in the four foot. Another is standing on one foot on the iron railing. Although Bill has seen swans on the line before, he always finds the whiteness of their feathers startling. They are bigger than he thinks is reasonable for a bird. He draws the power brake smoothly back, bringing the train to a stand before the swans. He knows it is illegal to touch swans. They belong to the Queen. [read more…]
No. 7 South Bank
I think we all know the story behind Coldplay’s Yellow but, in case you’ve forgotten, it seems that frontman Chris Martin was absent-mindedly looking out his window one afternoon when he saw something – the sun, a daffodil, Gwyneth Paltrow, nobody’s entirely sure – which made him stop and say to himself: that’s yellow, that is. [read more…]
photo by Roger Till
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