My Vibrating Flat in Tufnell Park

My flat has started vibrating.

My TV jigs from side to side, my wardrobe rocks, the windows rattle, and the bed shakes. I'm vibrating because of trains, big long heavy trains carrying cement hauled by imported American loco's. Apparently said vibrations from trains are very unlikely to cause structural damage to houses & buildings near the railway.

Dirty flowers for dead people

Something really wrenching about dirty flowers. The petal colours are fading like memories as they take on the filth and grime of the choking traffic and slowly blend into their final surroundings.

She used to drink in the Boston, a touch of colour in an otherwise grey pub. Hit by a 25 tonne truck after her G&T, zimmer frame no protection. No chance.

Here's a glass to you Sheila. Cheers

Drinking with Rosie in Kings Cross

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This is Rosie. She's a run down dirty old bird living on a back street on the wrong side of the development work at Kings Cross.

Tufnell Park Gadabouts

The beer garden is empty, it's Saturday afternoon and the first day of the year when you would even think about drinking cold lager outside. The sun is directly in our faces and is giving us a relaxed glow as we talk about our plans.

A London bus is no place for letting a fart go

Really busy tonight, no room to sit for the new arrivals so they spill upstairs and stand on the top deck. Bloody crap dance music all around me, nose bleed shite - am I the only one who wants to wind down on the way home? I'm reading the free rag thats been left on the seat.

Girl arrives on the top deck with white buds in her ears muffling her senses, she's got two bags of shoppping - off home for a nice meal or whatever. Now, the bus is relatively quiet given the number of people, most are travelling alone so no small talk. London buses don't slow for speed bumps and one of her bags falls over.

For a few seconds the bus is united in titters as she leans down to upright her shopping. She's just farted unnaturally loudly for the quiet bus. Let one rip, never flinched, never noticed, keeps nodding her head, oblivious to the fact she's made most of the top deck smile, broken the boredom, distracted a few thoughts.

Maybe it'd be different if it'd really stunk but it's nice to see a small fart can still raise a smile on a bunch of miserable commuters faces.

The Cat and Canary Wharf

I resign.

After 5 years I resigned. I was getting way to deep into a dark place, I need out, it's drowning me and destroying things again. It needs to stop. Whisky to celebrate the 5 years wasted and cracked head.

The Cat has helped and hindered - too many nights venting spleens about people I really couldn't care less about. Red mist has been here a few times and the tedious journey home was always a cloud at the end of the night.

Some places really do bring out the worst and this place is definitely one of them. A grand keep surrounded by a moat of poverty and overcrowding, jars with sensibilities. Whisky helps but she's a devil when she catches you in the wrong mood. All venom and scathing appraisals. Better out than in though..

London Houses and Australian wine

Houses are expensive and difficult to find, even though they are everywhere. 2 glasses of red wine, 2 pints of Guiness, a bottle of red wine and 2 large whiskies were supposed to help the search. It didn't. I can't remember much about the viewings - only that I haven't put any offers in. One had Guinea pigs and a dog another had a mad South African woman still buzzing from the night before. The last smelt of depression, it even managed to get through my numbed senses - that much I do remember.

So the search goes on and so does the fluid

Paranoid Parking for Two

What do you want?
Have I ticketed your car?
Why are you looking at me?
Is it now I get
punched?



I had a bad feeling this morning.
We are going to collide unless I slow my walking, oh no he's slowing his too..
should I speed up? - no, too aggressive.
Stop looking at me.

Think - it's just a job, somebody has to do it.
Remember the training, what did they say?
I can't remember I was too tired to concentrate on the fast English, too fast.

Was it you?
Did you ticket my car 6 months ago everyday for three days in a row?
Your all leeching scum carrying out the biggest racket known to this armpit city.
You look worried so I keep staring.
What's it liked to be hated by so many people?

Slowing down the pace.
Even though he's always late and doesn't seem to be able to read house numbers, you'll never get a "good morning" like the postie occasionally does.

Even through my whisky clouded eyes I can see your just the puss oozing out the sore, just stay away from my car and shuffle along.

Sad Eyed People

They sit in bars according to Jake Burns. Well they used to, but they’ve been priced out of the market round here and have taken to the streets en-mass, cans of strong lager in hand weaving against the flow of shoppers. The Weatherspoons doesn’t want them any more, the Hercules has upped its prices and the spin the wheel happy hour game has long since stopped attracting the bargain booze hunters.

This place is a bowl of shit soup, spiced with wastrels selling fake cigarettes, just out of jail and no-where better to go wanderers, junkies, bent cabbies who’ll commit GBH or rape as soon as ferry you home, struggling honest workers stuck in the rent trap and the new breed of inmates who live in the gated communes – “it’s so vibrant, real and urbane”.

A big London welcome awaits you on the final mange ridden leg of the A1.

Barry and Fig on the Tube

Barry was already feeling like he wanted to get well away from Fig
"how many of you could look at your brain in the mirror for 5 years"
"bitches like geezers wishing they had cocks, hur, hur"

"mind me hair - yeah I've just had me curlers in too"
"Watch him Barry, probably some terrorist with a gasbomb up his arse"

The silence is suddenly a very different kind of uncomfortable - not something anyone had preempted or prepared for this morning - just hold out for the next stop. These two clowns, just out of Pentonville, right stop, right tattoos, right mania, right attitude, right bags. I can feel small bumps on my neck. Nothing to read but the two lines of crappy holiday insurance marketing, over and over, and over....

It's 9.20 a.m, I'm 100 ft under ground trapped in a carriage with suits and nutters I need a cigarette and I wish I was drinking a whisky instead of sweating it.