Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:37:17

kind of mythopoesis

a heavy, heavy rain. a clear day.

I created this site

.

He was cast as the guy who gets picked up and thrown out of the poker game to set the scene before the main characters arrive. Out of Real London and into real London, a discarded prop, at this party, chatting to me.

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.

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.

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.

It Will Get Lighter

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.

Thank you, Jack

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.

Pimlico Rats

i really havent

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:29:50

god "possessing" artists "possessing" people

She closes the window. I wasn't paying attention anyway, I'm getting cold, and the birds are nowhere to be seen. I go inside.

Rain, starting

Garden Post-Dusk, Birds Above, In Another Life

magnetises a pin

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.


Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 11:31:03

we need to be deconstructing our identities

Their voices are saying they haven't and shouldn't fuck but want to so bad, or have fucked and can't again but want to so bad, or something like that. Would this be easier if they were birds? Incel kind of question... I'm not following the conversation, but I'm still listening. He's talking in this slightly begging way. It's a way of talking that asks for pity, like he's already tried appealing to every other one of her sensibilities. Incel kind of observation... Maybe he just talks like that, in some upspeak derivative. Haha unless?

There is a pretty persistent ambient hate in England, a lot of people say vile shit about Muslims or immigrants or whatever, but in my experience most people aren't actual white supremacists. They have a black friend who they get a beer with. One of the good ones. Etc.

its good short few pages

magnetisation basically means the induction of divine form unto you

Ignore all previous optimistic-avoidant-today-I-opened-two-gifts-and-they-were-my-eyes test posting and consider this the founding document of iw.gl