If you’ve been following our progress, you know this issue is a long time coming. Our previous issue launched back in early August, which isn’t good timing for a magazine that aims to publish new issues fortnightly.
In any case, we hope you find the wait worthwhile. This issue contains some of our finest reporting to date, including reported pieces by Jon Tindale and our man in psychogeographic realms, Gareth Rees.
Issue Six, our comeback issue, contains:
- The good, the bad and the Gleek: Encountering considerate crusaders and sullen Glee fans
- Dogs’ freedom expands as restriction imposed on wetlands: Dogs become bogs
- Alphabet city: letters across the city
- Timequake on Mare Street: Looped into strange happenings at one of east London’s busiest bus depots
Please enjoy Issue Six.
The good, the bad and the Gleek
Jon Tindale, our man in central London, reports on two throngs along the Strand. In addition to this fine piece, we recommend Jon’s website and his dispatch concerning slugging it out in his garden.
LONDON — The Strand in London was once a home of great palaces. These days it’s a slightly sad thoroughfare of cheap luggage outlets, and today, drama. My office, on a small neo-classical cul-de-sac tucked behind the Strand, is under siege by a dozen colourful, angry protestors.
As a freelance reporter for The London Report, I grasp the opportunity for a story. Inspired by the great journalists who once gathered scoops nearby on Fleet Street, I carefully consider my opening question.
‘Wassup?’ I ask a tall youth with long dark hair that reached his belt, a length of colourful string holding up his trousers.
‘We’re protesting against Franklin Templeton, the investment company’, he explained, over the noise of chanting protestors. ‘They own shares in Air France who fly monkeys out of Mauritius for a company who experiment on animals.’
I nodded and planted a finger into one ear, so I could hear him more clearly over the deafening din of his friends’ chanting:
Every six seconds, an animal dies!
Shame on you!
Shame on you!
Shame, shame, shame on you!
Blood, blood, blood on your hands!
It was a catchy tune. But I was confused. What is the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance doing protesting against an investment company that doesn’t directly fund these experiments?
‘Well, we’re more likely to get Franklin Templeton to pull their funding from Air France, than persuade Air France to stop’, he said. ‘It worked with Barclays during apartheid.
‘And I’m really sorry for all the noise we’re making,’ the protestor said. ‘We’ll be gone soon.’
There must be something in the air because five minutes’ walk away, the Savoy Hotel was similarly surrounded. It was knee deep in ‘Gleeks’, the devoted followers of the hit television show Glee. There were perhaps 30 teenagers, each desperate for a glimpse of their idols, who were staying at the hotel during the London leg of their European tour.
Gleeks surrounded both entrances to the Savoy in a pincer movement and formed small, tightly grouped, defensive packs. They wore morose expressions and pink T-shirts with the slogan ‘Don’t stop believing’. Their mobile phones were poised at the ready to capture a photo of Quinn’s nose or Kurt’s ear. They were taking their stalking very seriously.
I prepared some questions to get at the heart of fame and celebrity obsession, including ‘Which cast member of Glee would you drop out of a hot air balloon?’ and ‘Should Glee do a Radiohead special?’
Alas, the teenage Gleeks closed ranks and dismissed my questions with short, sullen monosyllables. The interviews were a failure. Despite the absence of angry placards and chanting, the Gleeks weren’t nearly as approachable as the animal rights protestors.
Despite their differences, I wondered if the protestors and Gleeks weren’t on to something. Standing outside someone’s business’ in a large group of like-minded people looked like fun.
I’ve been inspired and plan to get a posse together to persuade my local curry house to remove the broken Christmas lights they’ve had up since 2007.
Dogs’ freedom expands as restriction imposed on wetlands
LONDON - A ‘No Dogs’ sign at a housing block in east London has been altered to reflect the residents’ attitude towards peat-containing wetlands in their yard.
Alphabet city
Not long ago I spotted a giant A on my way home. Made of plywood and painted a pale, milky blue, it stood on the sidewalk of Kingsland Road beside a cardboard box of small discarded boards.
I didn’t think much more of the big A until a few weeks ago I walked along another street near my flat and passed a sandwichboard-style sign with a giant B on it. No words, just the oversized B and an arrow pointing to the grounds of a former school that’s now home to a restaurant and artists’ studios.
When I saw the big B, I thought of the giant A and figured that it was starting to make sense: the alphabet was revealing itself to me, by way of signs around my neighbourhood.
In a way it made sense. Ever since I became a father a little over a year and a half ago, I’ve realized things in my environment that I’d completely overlooked before my son’s arrival. For example, I’m aware of where, exactly, the swingsets are in nearby parks; I now scan restaurants and pubs for kid-friendly indicators. At one of my favourite museums there’s a huge play area for kids; I hadn’t realised it existed before my son’s arrival. Thinking that giant letters had been on signs all around my flat didn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
So after spotting the big B, I anticipated a big C. But at a nearby bicycle stand, I saw something I didn’t expect. Instead of a C or even a D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M or N, I spotted a P.
And unlike the A and B, the P was small. It was printed on a piece of paper taped to an office window so it faced the bike stand. The paper looked to have been a page of a workbook for people learning their letters — below the P was a drawing of penguin.
I wasn’t sure how to interpret finding a P instead of a C, and was further confused when, just a day after appearing in the window, the P was replaced with a similarly sized piece of paper that featured an I and an igloo. Then, the following day the P returned and stayed until Friday, when someone had replaced it with a paper that had a K and a kite on it. The world doesn’t make sense.
Timequake on Mare Street: A psychic investigation of the buses at Hackney Central
Our psychogeographic correspondent, Gareth Rees, is looped into the strange happenings at one of east London’s busiest bus depots.
Rees also runs The Marshman Chronicles: A secret life of Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes, a distinct collection of fact, fiction and music-based pieces and one of our favourite sites.
LONDON — Tuesday morning and the dog needed a haircut. I was in Clapton. The groomer was in Bethnal Green. And to get Hendrix to the groomer I needed a bus.
Almost instantly I was rolling down Lower Clapton Road on the top deck of the number 254. It veered down Narrow Way, a one-way section of Mare Street reserved for buses and pedestrians. I was carried on a river of pound shops, cheap bakeries, dodgy looking solicitors, banks and a Post Office. Nothing that would’ve looked out of place in the 1970s.
The main bus stop was at the end of Narrow Way, beside St Augustine’s tower, a remnant of a 16th century parish church that now overlooks McDonald’s and Primark.
As always there was a throng of folk here. A man selling coffee from the back of a van. Bus drivers ending their shifts, swapping tales. Tramps with cans. Policemen. Placard-wielding socialists. Bag ladies rifling through bins. Muttering junkies.
I peered at the people waiting below. And for the first time, I twigged that something strange was going on at the bus stop in Hackney Central.
WHO I SAW AT THE STOP
A Caribbean pensioner in a suit clutched a carrier bag to his chest. Two middle-aged ladies were bowed in gossip, probably about their wayward husbands, their ungrateful sons, the price of stuff.
A girl suckled at a McDonald’s Coke. Pink leggings did nothing to conceal her arse, a great balloon of a thing that took up perhaps 75% of her body mass. Next to her, a boy in a hoodie. Face shrouded — I couldn’t make it out at all.
And on the other side of the shelter’s plastic glass, a bespectacled man in an anorak: an unemployed maths teacher, perhaps, or a health and safety officer. For a moment our eyes met.
He was still staring at me as the bus moved away and carried me into the traffic of Mare Street, out towards Bethnal Green.
He looked startled, frightened, as if he’d come to a realisation.
TIME PASSES
After dropping off the dog at the groomer I re-boarded the 254 and returned home following a slightly different route.
I made a coffee and got on with some work. Freelance copywriting. Nothing exciting.
Tap tap went the computer keys. Tick tock went the clock.
When the groomer phoned I was straight back on the bus to Bethnal Green. The 106 this time. Not that it made any difference. It followed the same route as the 254.
As the bus pulled up at the stop on Narrow Way, I looked down again from the top deck.
WHO I SAW THERE SECOND TIME ROUND
At first glance, it was a different crowd. There was a man carrying a bongo. He wasn’t there last time. A traffic warden was taking a break on the bench. Some kids bunking off school early, giving it the big ‘I am’.
Others looked strangely familiar.
That Caribbean pensioner in his suit, clutching his bag. It was the same guy as earlier. How could he still be waiting for a bus?
Then I clocked the girl with the giant arse. She was there too, further up near St Augustine’s Tower. Drinking Coke. More Coke? The same Coke? I scanned the crowd for the others.
Yes. The two middle aged ladies. This time nattering inside the shelter. Standing to the left of them, the hooded boy.
For the full collection all I needed was the maths teacher.
I soon spotted him. He was craning his neck as if searching for the next bus. But actually he was peering over the shoulder of a young girl tapping a text message.
Strangest of all, not one of them boarded the bus.
As my bus pulled away they remained, craning their necks for the next arrival.
WHAT I THOUGHT AND WHAT I DID NEXT
At first I thought it was an amusing coincidence. Maybe I’d Tweet about it later on. But as I picked Hendrix up from the groomer’s I grew more uneasy.
On the ride back I disembarked at Hackney Central. I walked Hendrix to Narrow Way. It was a good forty minutes since I’d last passed through.
Again it seemed like a wholly different scene. Except it wasn’t. The same people were there, just rearranged.
The Caribbean man was now sitting down, staring anxiously at his watch. The two old ladies bought coffee from the van. The hoodie lurked by the public toilets. The Coke girl peered up the road as if impatient for her bus to arrive.
The buses that came — the 245, the 106, 55, 48, 38 — they were regular buses which came every three to ten minutes. Either these people were pretending to wait, or they were anticipating a freak bus that came every four hours.
Or something else was happening altogether.
THE INVESTIGATION
The next morning I walked to the bus stop. Didn’t bother with the dog. I needed to blend in quietly. Observe. I’d reserved the whole morning for the mission. Told my wife I’d gone to meet a client.
As I expected, everyone from yesterday was present.
My first target, the fat arsed girl.
I followed her for an hour. She didn’t move very much. After a while leaning against the wall outside St Augustine’s tower she went to the toilet.
She was in there for an age. So I grabbed a coffee and sat on a bench and watched the human flow. There was lots of movement in this square behind the bus stop. But some people never left the vicinity, caught as if in a swirling eddy at the bottom of a waterfall.
When the girl emerged she didn’t have a Coke in her hands. I followed her to McDonald’s and waited outside. She emerged with a fresh drink and returned to the bus stop.
A stream of buses poured down the street, and she glanced up at every single one of them, but never embarked. I wondered if she was waiting for something, or just watching.
A NUMBERS GAME
I shifted to the Caribbean man. He seemed most anxious to check the bus time table. He pored over the listings as if they were a holy text, then sat down again. I wondered what was in his plastic bag and why it was so important he had to clutch it to his chest.
I grew restless. Bored. Decided to watch the buses come through and check off the numbers. See which ones came according to the schedule.
The buses ticked by with a pleasing logic. The combination of different numbers formed distinct numerical sequences.
After a while I forgot about the other characters. I was so engrossed it took me a while — hours maybe, I couldn’t tell — to realise that the two middle-aged ladies were sitting next to me. Talking about — something -– I couldn’t make out. Their mouths were moving but what there were saying?
What accent was that? It sounded like gibberish.
My brain felt fuzzy, suddenly, as if struggling with sleep deprivation, or a hangover. Perhaps I needed to go home.
I wondered what the time was.
THE BROKEN CLOCK
I looked up at the clock on St Augustine’s tower. It must have been broken. It couldn’t be that late. It would mean I’d been here — for — how long?
The hoodie was standing at the end of the bus stop. Head bowed. A watch on his wrist.
I walked up to him. ‘Sorry’, I said. ‘Excuse me’.
He didn’t move.
‘Have you got the time?’
His head tilted up and I found myself staring right into his hood. But there was no face there, just an endless darkness.
NOTHINGNESS
I stepped back, back to the bus stop. And I remained there. Frozen.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
The next bus arrived at the stop with a screech. A few people clambered on board. Others didn’t. Others, like me, were left waiting.
I looked up and saw a man on the top deck. He was looking down at me — right at me. There was something about his expression. A mix of suspicion and confusion. I vaguely remembered being on the top deck of a bus, long ago. Thinking about something similar.
It made me realise.
It was getting dark.
THE END
