no like which do people call me

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.

or never left

magnetises a pin

and the fake qualifier

ahnaf is it worth reading all those books

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.

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.

stalgivc is the greatest poster of all time

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15

It Will Get Lighter

okay this is interesting because pedagogies we have rn are not proper models

Above and behind a window opens and a cigarette hangs out.

its good

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.

It's loud and he's gone deaf in one ear, so I don't think he's really hearing anything I'm trying to say. We're both pretty drunk too. It's making for a kind of surreal interactive Business Insider YouTube video of a conversation. He talks, waits for my response, sees my mouth moving but doesn't hear my words, then he imagines something in their place, and replies to that. At least I don't really have to do anything but drink and mime and listen to a lot of bullshit fake gangster talk, being an actor, boxing, the old days, blah blah blah.

December 2025

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 11:31:03

so i or you can author smaller fragments that get arranged

Rain, starting

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 23:18:46

"Put a blanket."

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.

wow, you are the first stranger to write a textwall to me