Iain And Will Have A Cup Of Tea
by Matt Haynes
Iain stared glumly at the stained formica. “It’s like I said, when I told you how Hackney’s pre-Games decontamination and realignment into a fugitive cartography of designer lock-ups and guerrilla sofa bars had created a hallucinatory Ballardian nexus of dystopian interzones – some of the ley lines they dug up to build the Basketball Arena had been there since the days of King Lud.” [read more…]
Leyton Lights by Matt Haynes
Once, on a night flight to Los Angeles, our pilot told us over the intercom that if we looked out the right-hand window we’d see Las Vegas. So I pressed my face to the Plexiglas and saw a strip of pure light blazing out from the Nevada desert like someone had just skimmed sodium pebbles across a vast black lake. [read more…]
A Thousand Black Fishes by Jude Rogers
The sky like a kingfisher’s flash.
The new Eastway overlooking the old, solid river.
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“I’ve heard there’s a new park here, where is it?” demanded the man in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park information centre in the middle of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Magic and Loss
A rainbow over Brisbane Road
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Threnody on the Suicide of a Parking Meter in Dagenham Brook, E10
by Matt Haynes
O dark devourer of the driver’s coin,
What broken dreams was this leap meant to fix?
What hope-denuded skyline did enjoin
You to cast off on this East London Styx?
[read more…]
Boris Johnson vs Dean Cox by Matt Haynes
Coffee in Meze Patisserie, Church Lane, Leytonstone. Don’t seem to have room for more than one baklava; heart’s too much of a mouthful. [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…]
Olympic Park, Hogwart’s Gate
by Jude Rogers
Girl: So which way do we go?
Boy: [lugging case behind him] Look! There’s signs further up.
Girl: Oh, yes, the big pink si… [steeplechases up to them] Oh.
[read more…]
by Matt Haynes
It’s hard to believe that it’s over ten years now since I first found myself gazing out wistfully over the Ethelred Estate from the top floor of a house just off Lambeth Walk still part-owned by Lambeth Council and wondering why there seemed to be so many helicopters around these days. [read more…]