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.
...
Overall meaning: The dream seems to explore vulnerability, unspoken emotion, and the tension between connection and isolation. It suggests you may be processing intense feelings of longing or missed opportunities, and your subconscious is guiding you to acknowledge, release, or transform them.
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 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.
not so on: yvf(wthw)
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.
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.
Thank you, Jack, for telling me I'm just as bad as the characters (actually they're people, if that means anything to you) that I'm writing about.
And thank you for telling me that the manner in which the narrator consistently fails to act morally is really compelling. Fuck you.
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.
He went in there with a camera to film it before he moved out of the building. He didn't think anyone would believe the story if he didn't have proof.
like magnets
nope. i only remember the leaves bristling behind the window during chemistry class
i guess imagine a multimedia obsidian or notion that behaves according to some insane arcane rules that you can't ever really determine
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
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.
The slug lives in my bathroom. I only see it in the early hours of the morning, when I'm not quite right.
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.