have you read
Above and behind a window opens and a cigarette hangs out.
"Anyway, you're you. I mean, look at you!" she says. "You could get with anyone, anyone in the street. Really."
One of the birds shoots out of the tree.
"No, it'll get cold!"
"Put a tut ahh put a-"
She says something that isn't really right but isn't really wrong. I'm not taking in their words any more, just their voices, trying to get a feel for whatever is going on between them. I'm imagining what it's like for them in this delicate situation, what I would say if it were me. She has that perfect upper-class accent, and she's using whatever upper-class tact that comes with it to navigate this. Style. They can't be together, but their voices are betraying them.
with this post net clarity and the hours of nothing that followed I realise this is going to be awful.
They're fucking around with the box. I ask her what people do with fireworks for so long before they're ready to light. She doesn't know.
I've found the girl, or she's found me, and we're smoking a cigarette while we watch the silhouettes of the French Raj and his fireworks bearer down on the bank.
We gather around the start of a causeway down to the Thames. It's a pretty cold night and there's a breeze coming off the river.
Thu, 06 Nov 2025 23:18:46
Thank you, Jack
We stand there laughing. The fireworks go off behind him.
Like the tide, it comes in and it washes over the beach. It's beautiful. But like the tide it goes out, sometimes it goes out further than it ever has, it recedes back across the beach and further out beyond the horizon. The bare seabed opens up in front of you and all you can do is look at it.
send link