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.

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.