May 182014
 
What We Love Is All We Really Lose

by Jacqueline Downs
I don’t know what they call this place; it seems to have several names. Norwood. Upper Norwood. Crystal Palace. Who knows? Who cares? All I know is I most certainly didn’t expect to find myself here after the Losey and Pinter, the serious stuff. Another bloody ruffian, although this, too, is – in my view – serious stuff. I am to be murdered with a poker, I believe. By a child! Brilliant. Subversive. We all know that children can be little fuckers. [read more…]

Apr 212014
 
Sherlock Holmes and the Howling Desert of South London

by Lucy Munro
I’ve been re-reading Sherlock Holmes. Not in the doorstopper collection with almost see-through paper I bought when I was thirteen and lugged to school and back for a blissful fortnight, immersed in its foggy miasma and gleefully drinking in the details of Holmes’ not-so-secret drug habit, but in a £1.99 Wordsworth edition comprising everything up to his demise at the Reichenbach Falls, a death from which he was never intended to return. [read more…]

Nov 032013
 
The Ghost of Tooting Bec Common

by Kevin Acott
Normans from Bec ended up in Streatham, as everyone does, and settled on Tooting Common, building a swimming pool but running out of money before they could get the roof done. Eventually, they integrated with a local tribe of fearsome, though eternally disappointed, warriors known as Palisfans and, to all intents and purposes, disappeared, leaving behind only the name of the place and the infamous South West London shoulder shrug. [read more…]

May 072013
 
The Hungry Cabbie

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…]

Sep 272012
 
North and South

by Zoë Fairbairns
“Oh south London,” he said, as if I ought to have made that clear before, as if it was generally understood among right-thinking people that the word “London” does not encompass “south London”.
“That’s right,” I said.
“We’ve got a girl in our office,” he said, “who comes from south London. She’s got the most marvellous accent.” [read more…]

Jan 282012
 
Between the Lines

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…]