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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
but it is in my head and am i compelled to realise it, so it is my silmarillion, my tempelos
Dreams like these are highly symbolic and emotionally intense. Here’s a breakdown of common interpretations:
mazelike/rhizomatic/immanent/emergent are not antithetical to a transcendent real but its very manifestation
⚠️ Live Document Forever ⚠️
Thank you for telling me that I'm failing to see how I'm reproducing the dynamics I'm trying to critique by only describing my Korean colleague / fresh meat and the black girl in relation to others and myself.
all that is to say
It was about a crazy lady who lived above his flat in Pimlico. She would let pigeons into her flat so she could feed them. Apparently she didn't want her presence in the flat to interfere with the natural behaviour of the pigeons, so she would let them nest and shit in there and she wouldn't clean it up, because it wasn't natural to do so. The pigeons would die, but apart from the smell and the sludge and the gas, the corpses weren't really a problem. It was the rats that came to eat them. The rats would eat the rotting pigeon corpses mixed in with the rotting pigeon shit and they would get ill and die too. New rats that came through wouldn't mind though, and they'd start to eat the mass, only to get sick and die in it later on. The population grew steadily as more pigeons and rats came from in the cold, to live naturally. They fed the mass further.
13 |
|
|
H |
|
|
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
|
so the method has to be autonomous
have you read
The Hatton geezer (fuck off) is emptying his pockets, searching for the silver rizlas he apparently has. He refuses to take one of mine (also silver) because the tobacco I'm giving him is already too much to ask. He tells me about the guy who can do 50g of Golden Virginia for a good price, the guy who every other man over 50 knows. I'm not interested.
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.
Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15
wow, you are the first stranger to write a textwall to me
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.