by Jamie Mitchinson
I’m crossing the road near Liverpool Street. My senses feel oddly heightened, though I’m not sure why. And, even so, I nearly miss it. Or, to put it another way, it nearly hits me. So practised am I at spotting the shape of my habitual single decker that when the open-top number 11 comes, I blank it out. [read more…]
by Melissa Davidson
We boarded the train for Euston, you and your dad and me. We played I Spy and you giggled when I said fart. We disembarked and made our way to the Eye. Both wearing red, we bundled up brightly against the grey sky, cheeks the colour of our jackets. [read more…]
No. 5 Russell Square
Was it not Lucian of Samosata who, in 170AD, wrote of being lifted up by a giant waterspout and deposited on the moon where a battle was raging between armies of acorn dogs and cloud centaurs? Sometimes, it’s not hard to guess what’s going through their little pigeon brains… [see more…]
by Jude Rogers
Almost eight years ago, I dared to go to the end of the line. I was a new girl in Dalston’s Ridley Road, and the North London Line that lay at the end of the market, past the huge snails, the hung chicken heads and the snowywhite webs of tripe, kept daring me to go east for pleasure, rather than head west for work. So one day I turned right instead of left, and went to North Woolwich. [read more…]
by Will Wiles
Someone is fighting a lonely war against noise on the Central Line. The shrill tone that announces that the doors are closing is too loud for them, or too high-pitched, or both. They scratch their complaint into the doors: Excessive Door Noise; Noisy Doors Cause Deafness; Too Loud. [read more…]
… contractors replacing Victorian water mains at Rushey Green warn that work may take longer than expected after delivery of enigmatic new pipework [see more…]
“Put the change in the jar, love,” he says, adding: “see you next season.” Then, leaving the Royal Cafe, he heads out into Leyton High Road, red replica shirt stretched tight across a stomach that’s now a heaving last-match mess of sausage, beans and fear. Come on you O’s…
… a spokesman for Lewisham council today admitted that the so-called “blindingly obvious” solution for dealing with SE6’s massive rat infestation might have been based on misinformation and syntactical confusion [see more…]
The cat in the red plastic box stares resentfully through the bars as if to say “beneath the table of a Drury Lane cafe is no place for a Persian Blue.”
