Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:37:17

Above and in front two birds are darting in and out of a tree. Sometimes they collide to fight or maybe mate, but I can't really make it out in the low light. It's just after

dusk

I'm sat out the front of a cafe in Hatton Garden. I've just eaten a brie and bacon panini, and I'm rolling a cigarette. Feeling very London. An old man comes up to me and asks for a roll-up. I oblige.

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:29:50

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.

I'm in a crowded lift and a girl I've never met tells me she thinks she might love me.
The lift won't stop at any floor, and I can't talk in front of all these people.

I am below everything.

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 21:22:59

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

a heavy, heavy rain. a clear day.

I created this site

The only real Londoner remaining is old, bitter, kept around for entertainment, defined by tropes from 30+ years ago. They play gangsters in films, or they work in a pie and mash shop, or they go on Business Insider's YouTube channel to tell you about their crimes. And they somehow still find the time to spend all day hanging about cafes and pubs for you to bump into, to remind you of Real London.

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.

plato

i did until you asked which kind of gave it away

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

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.