City: London
Author: Evelyn Owen
Location: Globe Road

Crossing, I turned right and homewards. In front of me, staggering along the pavement, was an old man in a raincoat. On his head he wore one of those white caps that Muslim men often wear^[1]. He had a wiry beard and a walking stick poking out from his coat at a funny angle. He lurched slightly, his hunched back rocking from side to side, hips obviously not what they were.

As he swayed to the right and I got a glimpse over his shoulder, I saw approaching from the opposite direction an elderly, papery-skinned lady in dark blue. She too had a walking stick, and was shuffling along at an even slower pace. Her white hair was perfectly set, pillar box lips pressed firmly together in concentration, watery eyes fixed on the cracks in the paving stones. Her stick waved about alarmingly as she made to plant it a little further along in preparation for her next shuffle.

I smiled to myself. ‘When these two old dears meet,’ I thought, ‘there’s not going to be enough pavement to go around. They’ll be nodding courteously and trying to edge round each other without whacking each other with their canes. How polite old people always are. No doubt there’ll be profuse apologies and great embarrassment all round.’

I slowed down, not wanting to interfere in their doddering manoeuvres. The old man took another step. They were almost parallel now. Time to negotiate the passing.

The old man hawked and spat loudly.

‘Don’t do that! That’s filthy, spitting in public^[2].’

The imaginary bonds of old age and dodgy hips and walking sticks came crashing down. The old man lurched right, the old woman ploughed onward, glowering, her trusty stick forging ahead, and as she passed me, her fury scorched my bare left cheek. I nipped round her, side-stepped and pressed on past the old man, who snorted loudly as I went by. His phlegm sat wetly on the tarmac, a marker of the confrontation, soon to evaporate.

City: London
Author: Stephen Ledger-Lomas
Location: Highbury & Islington tube platform

She looked up at me between a mass of tangled arms, knotted brows and apathetic expressions of uncomfortable misery. At first I noticed her pupils, which were dusk and oak and silent. I glanced away uncomfortably and scanned hundreds of other vacant expressions^[1]. Then our eyes flicked back together again, and a tear was gathering on her cheek.

The carriage roared on towards Highbury, juddering on bent rails, and every time I glanced back, she was trying harder to stifle tears as she looked at the floor. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, and a million terrible possibilities flicked through my mind, but I couldn’t speak through the tension, and I couldn’t bear the thought that nobody might be able to help.

Fists clenched on cold rails as the train came to an abrupt halt at its destination and the cattle roared out of the gate and she was ahead of me and almost gone. I swerved through the crowd and found her sitting alone on the last bench on that grim platform, just before the gaping tunnel, turned away from the world. Everyone had moved on. The final commuter clicked away in her accountancy heels^[2].

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

She was lying.

I left.

City: London
Author: Dylan Carline
Location: Brixton Station

We were to meet outside the tube station in Brixton. She was an old friend I hadn’t seen for years. The premise: a date. Riding up the escalator into the night, my first time here, I noticed acute drops in temperature with each weary clunk, and a regular metallic grinding that quite clearly meant ‘please use the stairs’.

It was colder than I expected. A still night, but dry compared to what I had become used to. Trails of breath lingered, their form and meaning suspended in transient beauty, inexorably decaying from this fragile state. Once gone, they were replaced, in seamless exchange, by the heavily breathing procession of people around me. I wondered if I was the only person here without an imminent need to be in another place, and therefore the only one capable of appreciating this scene. I briefly entertained the notion that it was entirely for me. Abruptly, someone buffeted me from behind. Evidently I was in the way. Rousing myself with a deep, icy breath, I realised that I had begun to tingle slightly.

The dense ball of excitement in my stomach wouldn’t attribute itself specifically to either the forthcoming event or the fact that I was back in London. It probably comprised an amount of both. Where I live (the Lake District, in case you’re interested), you don’t see that many people, especially at night, and the ones you do see are generally all made in the same factory. I spent ten minutes waiting at the top of the escalator, but could have happily been there for an hour.

A gig must have been happening somewhere^[1]. Hundreds of young people dressed brightly in day-glo trousers and coats filed past me. Resplendent non-conformity! Many of them wore sunglasses as well. I couldn’t decide whether this was part of the uniform or a safety-inspired consequence of their collective hue^[2]. One of them caught me grinning and shot me ‘die hippy’ neon rays from under his star-shaped glasses, before being sucked back into the amoebic mass. For some reason this tickled me, disproportionately so. I grinned even more.

From the dazzling stream of passers-by she suddenly emerged, instantaneously silhouetted against the crowd. Then, walking closer, I noticed her looking quizzically at the childish grin that refused to leave my face. To my relief, she giggled. We wandered off to eat, leaving our trails of laughter, unmistakably visible, hanging in the air outside the station.

City: London
Author: Gemma Barder
Location: Abbey Road zebra crossing

As birthdays go, it had been a good one. Presents in bed, a stroll through Regent’s Park, shopping on Oxford Street, then dinner at Maggiore’s in Covent Garden.
All of those places could produce a thousand different moments of joy and excitement, but today was going to be topped off with the ultimate moment. The most joyous, the most exciting.
Hopping out of St John’s Wood tube, strolling back to the tiny flat we rented together, our stomachs were full of rich, expensive food. The May evening air was just getting a little chilly. I was chattering on about something, but he was quiet and holding my hand that little bit tighter than usual. As we reached Abbey Road, he stopped me.

At times amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes completely lost, tourists crowd the zebra crossing on Abbey Road (the one I padded over every day to catch my bus to work). It must have been photographed a million times^[1]. I often wonder how many of those photographs I have popped up on. When a guy in Japan flicks through his holiday photos and shows his friends a picture of the ‘famous Abbey Road crossing’, there I will be with my Tesco carrier bag, or chatting on my mobile, or hopping off the bus. I’ve been asked to take the photos myself, directed people to point their cameras in the right direction so they can get just the right shot, and have been caught up in the numerous daily tours that pass by the studios every day. Before that moment, the crossing meant two things: the Beatles and ‘almost home’.

Now, at 11pm, the only people to see him and I on Abbey Road were the occasional car and anyone who happened to be logging onto the live webcam the studios have pointing at the crossing 24 hours a day.

‘I need to stop you’, he said. My stomach leapt. He was watching the road, and instantly I knew why. As soon as the traffic cleared, he led me into the middle of the crossing and got down on one knee^[2].

I won’t tell you what he said, that’s just for me. But as you can guess, I said ‘yes’, and now, wherever we travel, that place will always be ours.

City: London
Author: Jen Paton
Location: across the street from the National Portrait Gallery

Embodying all stereotypes of what is wrong with young women today, I clutch my latte, scowling at this grey day through my hungover haze. I’ve met up with my girlfriends this drizzly Saturday afternoon to get us a dose of culture by checking out the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit of Vanity Fair photographs.

But the exhibit is full until 4:30, and now I’m cranky and have a vague headache, a woozy stomach, and 3 and a half hours to kill in this crowded, tourist-teeming, smelly square of central London, when really I’d rather curl up in my tiny studio^[1] reading Anna Karenina. After last night’s excessively gay dinner party, my little plan for venturing outside has lost its lustre.

We’re bemoaning our fate when a white van pulls up ahead of us. Its back doors spring open and three scruffily-groomed men burst forth. One plugs his guitar in while the second sets up his mic. A third – the drummer – settles into a throne-like seat in the back of the van. A crowd gathers, and an impromptu rock concert begins.

Traffic stops – the entire top deck of a double-decker bus swivels around, open-mouthed. A group of seven year old girls on a ‘Princess Birthday Tour’, decked out in neon tafetta skirts, start to boogie. Cell phone^[2] cameras are raised in adulation as we wonder if these guys are famous and we just don’t recognise them.

It is unclear what the t-shirted young singer is singing. Something that sounds like ‘Penguins in your tea…can’t kill the flee DUH NAH NAH NAH NAHHH’.  The drummer is smugly holding the whole set together with a Mona Lisa smile on his face – as drummers do. One ebullient blonde chick is jumping up and down screaming as if we really were at a concert – as blonde chicks do. When they finish their set of two songs, we burst into applause.

‘Thank you, London!’ cries possibly-famous scruffy lead singer. The van folds up and drives away.

Newly bouyed by London’s awesomeness, I turn up a red-lanterned street (it’s Chinese New Year after all) to get some Orange Duck.

City: London
Author: Emma Hardy
Location: Trafalgar Square

We arrive on the economy bus service from The North^[1], so we aren’t actually allowed into Victoria Coach Station, and get turfed out two streets away. It’s a relief to be standing up, and our legs take another twenty minutes to fully get into their stride. Nearing Trafalgar Square, all we can think of is food. We wait at the pedestrian crossing, spotting somewhere cheap on the other side of the road.

As we cross, I feel the zip on my backpack give way. I turn and see the contents of my bag spilling out across the black and white pathway of the crossing. I yell, and you leap into action, grabbing toiletries and socks. I try to prevent any further spillage. Around us, drivers beep their horns and pedestrians trample on my clean jumpers and skirts. Nobody stops to help, except for you. We finally reach the other side of the crossing. It seems like minutes have passed, but it can only have been seconds.

We buy sandwiches and eat them sitting on the concrete steps in the sunshine in Trafalgar Square. We take photos on our mobile phones. I try to play about with perspective so it looks like you are actually standing next to Lord Nelson at the top of his column. As you pose, I worry about what life will be like for you if you move here, whether there will be someone to pick up your things when you drop them.

We practise your potential interview questions, work out how to get to the hostel that we will stay in overnight, comment on how much more expensive things are here. We kill time looking at portraits in a gallery^[2] and drinking coffee to help pep you up.

I circuit the gallery for a second time while you go for your interview. I can’t help but hope you don’t get the job.

City: London
Author: Cecilia
Location: Arnold Circus

Alley cat as I am, I always try and cut through the atmospheric back streets rather than walk up Shoreditch High Street on my way to Brick Lane. I can’t remember when I first discovered Arnold Circus, but since I did, it has become something of a ritual to circle this dreamy little round park with the octagonal band stand sitting like a jewel in its centre, and some rather handsome old council buildings surrounding it.^[1]

The month of April was beautiful in London last year, balmy with golden evenings and apple trees in premature bloom. I was inspired to throw an outdoor picnic for my birthday with the theme of naughty shepherds and shepherdesses, and what better setting for such an event than this picturesque little band stand?

Invitations were sent out, and an eyebrow-raising amount was spent on delicacies and fine wines. My best friend Amanda came early to mine so that we could transform into an Arcadian sheep-herding couple. Powdered wigs, painted beauty spots, bloomers and staffs adorned with silk ribbons - we looked like an 18th century porcelain couple come to life!

We pranced down Dalston lane to the local cab office. ‘Spur your horses sir, and take us to Arnold Circus!’ we commanded the frightened taxi driver.
We were the first to arrive, and promptly started to lay out the scrumptious repast over a checked linen cloth. It looked amazing, like a painting by Boucher.

Suddenly, the spell was broken by some aggressive hip-hop music, and as we looked up, two young lads were approaching us, using their mobiles like pocket-sized boom boxes.^[2] A quick look around and yep, there were tracksuit-clad figures coming from every direction, closing in on us.

It was obvious that we had chosen for our picnic spot the very place were all the male youths from the council estates gathered at 7pm every night to plan drug deals or discuss highland dance and world politics or whatever it is that they tend to do.

I could not help but smile when I saw their looks of disbelief as they discovered us. They came to a halt, forming a circle around us.

‘What the ****’?

Their normal hangout was transformed into a pastoral idyll, and inhabited by two white-powdered creatures in bloomers.

‘Are you ghosts?’ was the first reaction. I think I could detect some genuine fear in his voice.

‘Or freemasons?’ suggested one of his little friends.

My mobile beeped, as to confirm that we were indeed earthly mortals. I had several texts, all saying the same thing: problems on the tube, everyone was coming late. No moral support to be expected from fellow shepherds and garden nymphs, no chance for bloomers and wigs to outnumber tracksuits - we were on our own.

I swallowed and looked at Amanda. She seemed to be set on just blanking out any disturbing element, and was chewing on her cucumber sandwich as if the future of England depended on it. I grabbed the bottle of champagne.

‘Oh well, Arnold Circus is for everyone. How selfish of me to claim it for my birthday! Whoever touches my shepherd staff will be a dead juvenile delinquent though…’

City: London
Author: John
Location: The Three Kings

Twenty years. Well, twenty-two actually. Twenty-two long bloody long bloody long years, and here I was in the pub once more. In Clerkenwell. Waiting for the woman I’d chased with a single-mindedness that still surprised and embarrassed me when I thought about it. And, of course, I’d got nowhere. Doesn’t do to look that keen. But for all three of my college years she’d been the shaping vision. That’s what I called her, after some lit-crit book I was reading at the time.

Tall, double-barreled^[1] and with an attitude – what was not to like? Although I had a series of semi-significant others to help pass the time when I was supposed to be studying, she only had to walk past and all of them became absent.

Then the unthinkable had happened. We met and became ‘friends’. Just about the last thing I had in mind really, but I went along with it in the hope that she might come round. Somewhat predictably, she didn’t. Later, surprisingly I’d had the briefest of things with her wannabe model sister who’d disappeared off to Italy after we’d spent a pretty useful weekend in an Eastbourne wedding cake hotel.

And now here I was in the Three Kings trying to look EC1 boho and hoping that she hadn’t changed, even if I had. And I had. Used to be relatively trendy, that’s what people said, and as the years clicked away I’d morphed into what I hoped might be regarded as stylish. Would the same have happened to her? Ostentatiously reading the Guardian^[2] – that’s where she was working now. Amazingly she’d rung up out of the blue (still don’t know how she got my work number) and asked if I knew who was speaking.

I should have. The deep-toned big sister voice wrapped itself around me and of course it was familiar, but not enough, apparently. In spite of this failing, an assignation was made and I was left to reflect on how things would be between us.

And then, in she walked, asking if I needed a drink. Like it was yesterday. The hair was more or less the same, and mercifully, figure and face seemed little altered. We even seemed to have a certain amount in common.

Two more drinks and twenty-two recovered years later, we made an appointment to meet again. Clerkenwell was working its shabby magic upon us both. Kisses were exchanged. She left. Looking around, I thought the Three Kings had been a good choice, all in all.

Actually, I mislaid her number and she didn’t ring. Well, what did I expect? Haven’t been back to the Three Kings either. Probably for the best. As one door shuts, another closes.

City: London
Author: Andrew Flynn
Location: the King’s Road

It’s the first day of the Peter Jones^[1] summer sale and the rain has not let up all morning, varying only it seems in its intensity. I can see each outward breath condensing into dandelion-fine white mist on my way to the parking ticket dispenser. It’s the end of June but it could easily be October if it were not for the green. I’m sticky damp by the time we get to the store where nothing, it is said, is ever knowingly undersold.

The sale is a disappointment. I suppose there’s a special irony about sales: the stuff that’s discounted is the stuff that won’t otherwise sell. If you like something you see - I mean, really like it - then the chances are it is indeed a truly likeable thing.^[2] And, because of its inherent universal likeableness, it will inevitably, as night follows day, lack the little red tag that says: ‘Today you have been blessed’. Also, my excitable waist-high shopping companion only wanted to look at the toys. And it was crowded. So very, very crowded.

As we trudge back through the rain along the red brick streets, clutching our solitary duvet cover, trying to find where daddy left the car, I reflect on how we’ll laugh about this later. Irony, like fine brandy, is best enjoyed when it’s had time to mature, I decide.

The traffic is crawling along the stretch of the King’s Road in front of the store’s facade. I have a few moments to study the man in the red cloak and sandals holding a bucket and a sign. He must surely be collecting money, but he makes no approach to any passer-by, doesn’t even rattle his vessel. Sir Alan would most definitely not be impressed. He stays rooted to the spot, sometimes shifting his weight to the other foot, sometimes glancing up and down the street, but little else. I notice then that his is the calmest face here. I like to think that his sign says something spiritually wrong-footing like: ‘Nothing is forever, to live is to suffer, please give generously’.

But maybe he’s not collecting money at all. Perhaps he’s collecting a little bit of the suffering that passes in front of him on the pavement. With the rain and the traffic and the frustrations of the PJ sale, trade will probably pick up soon. He might even need a bigger bucket. I suspect there’ll be one on offer in the basement.

City: London
Author: Janet Nesaule
Location: a pub in Canning Town

‘This is fantastic,’ I say, ‘a real East End pub’.

‘Yeah, it is. We always come here.’ Charlie speaks with pride. He produces his crumpled newspaper and turns to the sports pages. West Ham are doing well in the league. 

I am determined to love everything about Canning Town – this grey dockland, Ladysmith Road with its row of dirty redbrick houses, Pete’s house – I love Pete. I am up from Devon, my first time in the East End.

Pete introduces me to Big Jean. She sells stuff, mainly her slimming pills, Black Bombers. She is gargantuan, ‘but the doctor ain’t cottoned on yet’.^[1] Big Jean lives next door to Pete with Jean, Little Jean and Baby Jean.

‘Why Jean?’

‘Guess they must like the name.’ We are Art Students. Pete buys some Bombers.

The pub starts to fill. Men from the docks still in their work clothes, loud conversations and braying laughter. Two black men, my first up-close, come over.

‘Give us a tune, Pete.’

He plays The Velvet Underground’s ‘I’m Waiting for my Man’.

‘Nah, Pete – not that!’

Charlie’s voice: ‘Fancy a few whelks,^[2] Jan?’ His arm comes over my shoulder, proffering a small plastic dish.

‘Thanks, Charlie. Lovely.’

Dear god, they look so disgusting, but I sense that this could be some sort of challenge. Will I pass the test and be accepted by the good folk of Canning Town? It seems important. 

I spear a whelk with the cocktail stick provided and put it into my mouth. The taste is salt water, and the rubbery texture never-ending. I take a big swig of beer and try to wash it down, but the whelk stays.

‘Have another’, says Charlie, delightedly.

‘What’s going on?’ Pete has returned from the bar.  ‘Fuck’s sake, Charlie, what you doing?’

‘I’m eating whelks’, I say miserably, my eyes beginning to fill with tears.

‘Why? They stink.’

Of course, I knew this, but I ate the whelk to prove something. I suppose you could say to prove my commitment to Pete. Obviously this was unnecessary.