by MW Bewick
Hattie also remembered that when my father was a child he had described the river as a yawning snake, which to me seems precocious. To him, snakes meant danger, and the space below the bridges was filled with slithering horror. They found things in rivers too. It said so on the news. Whatever people secreted in the unfathomable water eventually washed up. [read more…]
Threnody on the Death of a Street Lamp on Lollard Street, SE11
by Matt Haynes
O noble lantern ’neath whose kindly fire
my love and I did oft together lark,
our bodies, lust-engorged, ’twined in desire –
why hast thou gone and left us in the dark?
[read more…]
by Juno Baker
Steve dreams of King Canute, sailing through Brixton on a Viking longboat, gliding past the Ritzy yelling in a smug nasal twang, “Oy, Steve! Thought you were getting a Waitrose round here?” He watches Canute’s ship disappear up Effra Road towards his flat. There’s Shelly, all dressed up on the back. She smirks at Steve as if to say she’s too good for him now. King Canute puts his arm round her and shouts something else, but he can’t hear it. [read more…]
Please Do Not Touch The Walrus No. 9
A fantastic new series in which we attempt to catalogue some of the amazing things you can’t do in our fabulous capital city. Today: pointing at the sun in Greenwich. [see more…]
by David Marston
There, at the end, was a tent. And not just a tent. An upturned steel drum was acting as a rainwater butt. White brushed ash marked the site of a fire. Clothes hung from a bush, drying in the morning sun, and a rolled-up tarp suggested some more extensive waterproofing had recently been in use. Someone was living under canvas just outside Lewisham town centre. [read more…]
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…]
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…]
by Howard Colyer
Goalkeeper’s fumble,
Bywater can’t hold the ball,
then the rest follows.
Please Do Not Touch The Walrus No. 8
A fantastic new series in which we attempt to catalogue some of the amazing things you can’t do in our fabulous capital city. Today: practising any form of golf in Russia Dock. [see more…]
by Gary Budden
The fourth and final image is simpler, easier to interpret. It gives Andrew more hope than the previous pictures. A solitary young girl clutching a balloon with the spriggan’s face its decoration stands smiling with genuine joy. In the background, the Olympic Park is consumed by hungry flames as tattooed looters ransack a shopping centre. [read more…]