by Henry Wilson
We set out after lunch, hurrying along the quiet dusty back streets of West Hampstead to the Overground station on West End Lane, just in time to squeeze onto a Stratford train. Body heat radiates through summer dresses, T-shirts, skirts and shorts in the sun-drenched carriage. A sense of expectancy and excitement rises out of the chatter and laughter; a hundred disparate journeys blend into one. [read more…]
At Bow Church DLR, the bride boards, cream heels delicately minding the gap. Her right hand grips a posy, her left curls itself around a handrail, silver ring glittering.
Removing his coat, he breaks through the buses and levers himself over the railing that divides Upper Street. Dismounting, he smiles at me drunkenly, then jigs into Angel’s welcoming mouth.
by Sno Flo
Spotting johns is easier. I see one in Ryman’s, buying pens. He’s fifty-odd, tall and bladder-bellied, with a sundae-swirl of fifties hair and a hot-pink polo shirt. Pink crocs too, the unsavoury bastard. I walk out. [read more…]
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…]
by Jude Rogers
I try to shake away the caffeine buzz, and look again. No, that’s a train, alright. It’s slowly advancing westwards in the morning’s heavy mist. And then I look at the sign on the platform to find out if the 8.14 to Gospel Oak is due to arrive on time. Something else is there instead. The 8.08 to Hampstead Heath. [read more…]
Have you ever noticed, he suddenly said, almost as if he knew her, that the studs fixing these tube-seat covers in place all look like the faces of startled bears?
Wood Wharf
Ah, that would explain the name…
[see more…]
London Transport Apologises No. 3
Customers on Platform 2 should stand well away from the platform edge as the approaching train has had a really bad day. [read more…]
by Mark Sadler
It was a Roman scholar called Philetus who, in 197 AD, first wrote of two great herds of wild horses that he claimed were engaged in an unending circular migration of the lands surrounding the Britannian city of Londinium. The herds were of unequal size. The slightly larger one travelled in a direction that we would now refer to as clockwise; the other went counter-clockwise. [read more…]