Street Sadness

(Names Changed to Protect the Guilty) The two-year-old I was babysitting waited up for its parents to arrive home, having stubbornly refused to lie down and listen to bedtime stories and who was seemingly immune to the 'Grumpy Uncle' routine I had adopted for the tedious occasion. In that case, I reasoned, it could damn-well sit in silence beside me on the couch while I watched dozens of Louis CK clips on YouTube via the wide-screen television. This it did, whilst feeding its face with the crunchy, deep-fried confections that its mother firmly believed were a 'healthy option' because they were 'vegetarian'. It also guzzled milk from a plastic, spouted cup. At 11.45 pm the parents arrived home. The child looked up at them as they came through the door and immediately expelled a jet of projectile vomit out into the room and over its clothes and the couch we were sitting on. It began to grizzle. The mother immediately snatched the dripping bundle up to her bo...

A young builder standing with three others on the pavement outside a house they are renovating. He is talking about a problematic fourth member of their crew who is not present.    "So, 'e's upstairs yellin' at Charlie on 'is fuckin' phone, an' it's fuckin' this an' fuckin' that an' fuckin' the uvver fing. An' there's a fuckin' family downstairs an' they're listenin' to all this fuckin' palaver. I says to 'im, later, I says, You can't talk like that in someone's 'ouse cos they'll get the 'ump and complain."    "That's right", replies another of the builders, "You gotta be respeckful in that situration".    "But the thing is", the first builder continued, "after I says all this to 'im, 'e got the 'ump wiv me  and he stormed out of the 'ouse and he slammed the front door and all the glass all smashed. So it only goes to sh...

    At lunchtime I went into the South American cafe down the road in Hackney. I had just ordered my meal when a man came in, ushering his twelve-year-old daughter before him. By the father's over-solicitous conversation and body language it soon became obvious that he was a divorced weekend-dad who didn't see his daughter as much as he would have liked. This, then, was a special lunch treat. She was a slightly chubby blonde girl with a pleasant face. She wore sparkly blue nail varnish and had her hair braided into a plait for the occasion. He stared lovingly and intently at her whenever he asked her a question. I was a little surprised to feel tears begin to prick my eyes at the lovely way they were both trying really hard to please each other on this special day out together. They walked to the table opposite me. He asked her whether she would like to face the window. She told him that he should decide. He allowed her the seat with the view.     They sca...

I was a little early for an appointment to meet a friend in Vauxhall, so I called in to The Black Prince for a few pints and to while away an hour. As I stood at the bar a  dapper gent in his late-fifties, to my right, was engaged in conversation with the young Italian barmaid. He was half-cut, but still quite lucid,   "So there were only four or five books that you wanted? Out of the hundred I showed you?"   "Yes, I think that's enough, you know?"   "Oh, alright, but I really don't think you will like that last one on your list."   "Why not?"   "Well, Phillip Roth is a very good writer, but that one is about a young man ... and masturbation!" I realised that he was talking about Roth's terrific Jewish guilt novel, 'Portnoy's Complaint'.    "You surely wouldn't want to read about that, would you?" The girl shrugged and said she thought it sounded interesting. I turned to the man and said,   ...

I strolled towards the entrance of Victoria Park and saw walking towards me a tall, gangly man in his mid-thirties, sporting a straggly beard and a filthy blue rucksack on his back. He wore very dirty clothes. He was walking a ferret on a thin, blue leather leash connected to a harness that wrapped around its little front legs and chest. As ferrets go, this one was quite beautiful. It had a chirpy, happy face and long, silky, chocolate brown fur that finished in rich black at the tip of each frond. It was very clean - which could not be said of his owner, who now spoke,   "I see you like my ferret, mate?" I said that I did, and I stopped to allow the creature to wriggle over my feet as it acknowledged and negotiated my presence. And now the man's mother wheeled up beside him in an electric wheelchair. She was morbidly obese. Her clothes were as dirty as her son's. I was suddenly aware of a horrible smell which proudly announced the pair's determinedly unwashed s...

Ventured out with dear friend C.D. on one of our regular photographic treks around town. On these adventures she provides a long-term inhabitant's inside knowledge and takes me to parts of London I would normally not be privy to. I provide a kind of lookout in the event of the necessity of her stepping into the road for a great shot, or into the semi-deserted back courtyard of a shop off the main strip. Observe as we stalk the mean and semi-mean and totally-mean streets of this region, our cameras stealthily stowed in our shoulder bags to circumvent the ingenuity of bicycle-borne snatch-thieves, to be stealthily withdrawn and brought into service to capture the abject glitter-grunge we chance upon. Today's adventure took us to the always eventful Mile End. As usual I was struck by the fact that bouncy, cuddly London skies have been wheeled in only metres above one's head: so very different to the Australian troposphere with its million acres of heat, and million-warehou...

    After my walk around town on Saturday afternoon I ventured into the Machete Bar (I was curious to see if the coffee was as unpromising as the name suggested). The lovely young Latina waitress took my order and swayed off to make my coffee. As she prepared it I was rather taken by a song that played over the sound system. When she brought my (as it turned out) delicious coffee I asked her the name of the band.     "Oh! I lub dees band!' she said, "They ees berry good! The lyrics and ebberyting. Berry great! They ees Spanish." I again asked her for their name. She blushed.     "I will write it down for you." She went to the counter and picked up a pencil. She scribbled the name on an order sheet, which she then folded and brought to my table on a little silver change platter. She walked away as I unfolded the missive. The name of the band was Love of Lesbian.     Later in the evening I was invited by someone to a birthday party...

Prince Sudhir On the late afternoon Hammersmith and City Line tube an Indian woman got on with her two children: a girl around five years of age and a boy of seven. The boy wheeled a silver scooter beside him. He took the only available seat, leaving his mother to stand in front of him, holding his sister's hand. He made it very clear that he was not listening to any of his mother's discussion about where to best store the scooter by kicking her several times in the shin. She moved back several paces, so he shimmied down in his seat in order to lash out with his leg and land a hefty kick in her lower stomach. She took this with humility and said nothing to the boy. At the next station the little girl attempted to move the scooter away from the door. The boy screamed and shoved her in the chest. She fell to the floor and began crying, whereupon the boy kicked her in the leg. At this the mother said, quietly,    "Sudhir, please don't kick her." Sudhir grabbed the...