Street Sadness

    This morning I walked from my flat across Vauxhall Bridge, to my bank in Victoria, to arrange my rent payment. It was a beautiful, crisp morning and all of the puddles along the way had become sheets of ice that crunched underfoot. Fallen leaves in the gutters were frosted in white.   The air felt pleasantly like burning ice in my chest and my breath drifted white in front of my face.     Leaving the bank, I went into a cafe for a late breakfast. It was stuffed with tourists. A buff young Australian buck was sitting with his girlfriend, talking loudly to a young Finnish guy.   “Yeah, we was fucken smashed for three fucken weeks, mate! Fucken beer, fucken whiskey, tequila, fucken shots, the lot! We were fucken legends!” His girlfriend joined in.    “Fuck! We were fucken alcohol zombies for the whole fucken trip! Amazing!” The Finnish guy thought for a bit and then said,     “Did you guys met Andrea when she was here...

After braving the tourist Christmas horde in Oxford Street this morning, I stupidly entered the first coffee shop I found. I was served by what I assumed to be a nine year old girl, but she could have been a short young woman. Most unfortunately, this establishment turned out to be a Starbucks, a fact that I didn't realise until I had sat down with what was supposed to pass as my 'coffee' and looked up to see the most hideous mural scrawled on a blackboard: it featured a mermaid (evidently their trade mark image); she wore a crown on her very badly-drawn head. It is the first time in my entire life that I have ever been in one of their stinking establishments, and I apologise to readers of this who are more socially-and-ecologically-conscious than I happened to be on this one single occasion - forgive me! I bravely had two sips of the swill that foamed in the cardboard cup on my table. It was possibly the worst 'coffee' I have ever had the misfortune to pass between...

    It was 11am  and I sat in the cafe down the road from my flat with my regular morning mug of tea steaming on the table before me. It  has become my habit to visit this establishment every day for my breakfast. It  is run by three Polish sisters. Two of these young women are very friendly. But on this occasion I had been served by the third, surly one - let's call her Zofia. She had stood staring at me from the other side of the counter, stony-faced and pallid as the grave. As usual, she was wearing extravagant false eyelashes which emphasised her ethereal mien and made her look just a little bit insane. She looks as if she has never laughed in her entire life - never so much as smiled - as if she carries the entire weight of her people's tragic heritage on her shoulders.      "Yes, pliz." she demanded, blankly. I made my order and sat at the table facing the window, the better to watch life's passing parade. Outside, people were braced again...

    I was walking in the city. It was only 4 o’clock but the winter evening was already closing in. People scurried through the streets finishing up their business and their Christmas shopping for the day, before the rush hour took hold. It was very cold and our every breath hung before us in misty vapour. Despite my jacket I felt the implacable chill skewer my core. My ears were stinging from the frosty air; they were raw and when I rubbed them my hands felt red-hot.     In a wide doorway, to my left, two homeless English boys, around fifteen or sixteen years of age, had set up a temporary nest. They may have been brothers, or perhaps they had once been just strangers thrown together by fate as they tramped along the mean pavements. It was hard to tell because the street had moulded them into a generic abjection. They sat on an elderly, dirty-pink eiderdown and they had two blankets which they were now pulling up over their scrawny legs. There were a few ba...