There is a pause. She ashes her cigarette. It falls on me. It seems like the birds have stopped too.

But seriously, thank you, Jack, for telling me that I could submit this to a high-level literary magazine or creative nonfiction outlet with some minor tweaks. I don't think I will do that.

with this post net clarity and the hours of nothing that followed I realise this is going to be awful.

Actual born-Londoners aren't LARPing like this, they sold their shite family home for a million pounds and moved to Malaga years ago. They have their culture and they've taken it elsewhere.

The Hatton geezer (fuck off) reminds me of this old failed actor who I'd met at a party a few years ago, another man out of time and out of place. This actor had scored a minor role in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and never really let go of it, had gone on to build his whole identity around it. I can't really blame him.

It's dusk in a snowy forest and I'm playing with a fox. It bites my wrist but there is only a dull ache. I feel that it wants to say sorry but can't. I die.

The studio designs some piece of media to perpetuate the marketable concept of Real London, while the real London is hollowed out by hollow bankers or whatever. Not pulling on that thread. But the yuppies don't mind because they're free to iterate on Real London without any competition from real London because it's too concerned with its slow eradication. And there's nice flats to live in now or whatever. The yuppies can begin to inhabit their Real London.

in a post. I want to be remembered

Rain, starting

hello reader,

He was a proper old-fashioned London geezer (cringe word, hate it, can't think of a better one, worst of all it's the correct word), kind of East Endy, kind of Real London, the kind you don't really meet but if you do it always feels like an uncanny immersive theatre experience. They're anachronistic. They only belong in the London collectively imagined by people who don't spend any time in it.

you know who you are. no more time, not like

1

. way too specific.

I'm getting bored and he can tell, so he shifts the topic towards me. He tells me he'd spotted me chatting to a girl earlier, a black girl, and asks what I thought of her, if I liked her. I mimed affirmatively.

confused - is it the tide or its absense? I still like where I was going with it. anyway, real reader know this site is the note.

the point of this was to try and avoid this narcissistic death spiral I'm in by acting anonymously and impulsively. how can that feeling that even Jack can't describe paralyse me if my name isn't next to any of this? the excitement of believing I just need a new process has overcome me and I have cummed out an empty webpage.

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 23:18:46

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15

Thank you, Jack

I imagine that some lab-grown 29-year-old from Woking with a mind honed to identify individuals who fit the profile of Real Londoner (as conceived of by 50 opinion-polled racist builders and their wives in the Midlands) picks a stubborn local who can still somehow afford to live here and passes him along to some creative studio.

it holds me to something (you, now). I love editing!

magnetisation basically means the induction of divine form unto you