We look out over the river to a block of luxury flats built on the site of some old docks. It would be nice to live right there. Yes. The conversation drifts to the pleasantness of warm lighting and whether anyone needs a smart home. I interrupt her to make a joke about the French Raj as he runs up the causeway. We stand there laughing. The fireworks go off behind him.

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.

Pimlico Rats

---

no i haven't really read anything

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.

like magnets

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.

magnetisation basically means the induction of divine form unto you

yeah

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 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.

that looks like my instagram account

lol yea

lol

i guess imagine a multimedia obsidian or notion that behaves according to some insane arcane rules that you can't ever really determine

fw

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 23:18:46

nope. i only remember the leaves bristling behind the window during chemistry class

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

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 have nothing to do, I'm watching them, trying to figure it out.

Lift Analysis

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?

was it worth it

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

13, H, grate

it is hopeful