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.

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.

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

I Write Goodbye Letter

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

Windrush Art Kid Oligarch

IWGD

2 (actually index). two is company

Worse Lift

The bird dives back into the tree. It shakes, some leaves fall.

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15

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

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.

it is hopeful

It's

dusk

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

i see a website though something that reconfigures or is mazelike

think this is much more rhizomatic or immanent or mazelike than mainstream education now