by Matt Haynes
Prompted by yesterday’s announcement by Grant Shapps – that things would all be a lot better if we just got on with our drinking and bingo and let them sort out running the country – we look back at our response to a similar initiative from the Evening Standard during the heady last day’s of Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty: a hard-hitting series in which irony did battle with hypocrisy for the soul of Standard editor Veronica Wadley. [read more…]
“Do I look like someone who needs a sorbet-maker?” he dolefully asks the bleary-eyed flotsam piled up on the N3’s stairs as birthday gifts are passed between strangers for appraisal.
Traditional London Street Games
Number 3: Pigeon Hide-and-Seek
[see more…]
Old Canary Wharf Pier
some photos of the old pier…
[see more…]
PIGEONS IN PUDDLES No.8: Kingsway
by Matt Haynes
KEVIN PIGEON: Here you go, Em – d’you see what I mean?
EMILY PIGEON: This is what you’ve brought me to see?
KEVIN PIGEON: Yes. Don’t you just love how the leaf is, as it were, juxtaposed with the reflection of the tree?
EMILY PIGEON: It’s a leaf.
[read more…]
Magic and Loss
A rainbow over Brisbane Road
[see more…]
Yuri Gagarin, Greenwich Observatory by Matt Haynes
When, at 06:07 on the morning of 12th April 1961, Lieutenant Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin of the Soviet Air Force strapped himself into the capsule of Vostok 1 as it waited on the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and uttered the words “Let’s go!”, thus inaugurating the history of manned space flight, it always seemed likely that, should he return safely, he would be fêted around the world. [read more…]
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…]
with apologies to Richard Long
A line made by walking back from the pub.
[see more…]
The Twelve Days of Smoke
On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…
[read more…]