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…]
The sending of the first Smoke book to the printer is celebrated with a trip to Erith.
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Penny-Farthing, Lee Navigation Canal towpath, November 2012
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LOCOG has denied openly mocking motorists in south-east London with its new Olympic road closures. [read more…]
A wet back garden in Leyton on a Monday afternoon; all is still, before the roar. The plants wave their leaves to the wind, and the warmth of 80,000 cheers.
by Matt Haynes
They smile for photos;
Their shoulder-mounted rifles
Brush the toddler’s hair. [read more…]
The Song of the Olympic Binman
by Matt Haynes
I am a binman for the council
And I walk the back roads,
Searchin’ in the dark for another bag to load.
I hear we mustn’t use our bin lifts,
I hear you will not like their whine,
And the SE10 binman must be gone by nine. [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
As the doors shut and the train accelerates away from the station, the boy’s father holds the palm of his hand six inches behind his son’s back. The same conversation, almost word-for-word, has occurred at Devons Road, Langdon Park and All Saints (for Chrisp Street Market). Soon, almost certainly, it will occur at Pudding Mill Lane. [read more…]
A disturbing investigation into the effects the Olympics has had on the speech of young women in the Walthamstow area. [read more…]