Street Sadness

    "I went up to that Graham and I said to 'im, I know you're a boxer, but I don't care about that, you are the most 'orrible man I've ever met. You are a slimy, evil, suck-up arse'ole. I said to 'im, I said, when did you become the fucking evil arse'ole you've become?"    "Yes, he's a terrible person."    "'At's right, and the fact that 'e works for Stan proves that 'e knows nothing. Stan runs everyfing 'e touches into the ground. And you know Stan left that beautiful Irish woman 'e was married to, don't yer?"    "Oh, really?"    "Yes. Took up wiv a eighteen-year-old Thai girl or sumfink. Dirty cunt."

A German friend just told me a story about his friend. She was shopping in a Prada store, somewhere in Germany, and she took her elderly Dachshund with her on a leash.    "Vat do you call zose dogs zet look like a sausage?" And while she was browsing in the shop, the dog died.    "I mean, ze enimal just, like, died, right zere in ze shop! She looked down end saw zat ze zing vas dead!" The staff at Prada were very attentive. They grabbed a shoe box, took out the Prada shoes and gave it to her so she could stuff the Dachshund into it.    "Zey even gave her a Prada scarf to lay over ze dead dog in its box - how nice vas zet?" The woman thanked the staff and made her way back to the train station. She sat on a bench to await her train. Somebody sat beside her. Just as the train arrived the person stood up and walked off, taking her Prada bag with them.    "I mean, zey zought zey ver getting a real treasure! Imagine! A pair of Prada shoes, ent f...

    I just got off the train at jam-packed, peak-hour Victoria station. The crush of the human herd in this vicinity was, as usual, astonishing, and made much worse because of the building works being undertaken just outside on the street (some sort of underground station extension, beneath the intersection). I came out of the side entrance and wended my way through the high-powered and the underdog alike. A booming sound began to be distinguishable above the traffic, and it gradually became more familiar - it was in fact the theme music from The Flintstones, as if blasted through a trombone. As I continued up the crowded street the source of the cacophony was revealed: sitting cross-legged on the broad flagstones of the dirty street was a man in his late-twenties. He was spectacularly grimed with the filth of the city. In one hand he held out his black cap, which contained a few silver coins; in the other he held a fluorescent orange traffic cone, battered and filthy, up to h...

   This morning I crossed the road to the three Polish sisters' cafe for breakfast coffee and an egg and bacon sandwich. I took a seat up the back of the little establishment, which was empty but for an old coot sitting in the opposite corner. His great beak of a nose was dipping over the pages of The Times and his lips moved silently with the effort of reading. After a while he pulled out a pair of spectacles and held one lens up to his right eye and continued reading, methodically, every column. At last he had wrung out all of the information from the paper and he folded it in half, and in half again. Then he pulled out of his coat pocket a well-thumbed bible, grimy with use. He opened it at a random page. Next, he took an enormous magnifying glass from another pocket and began to read the tiny, inflammatory text. Many sections had been highlighted in fluorescent yellow or pink and there were little slips of bookmarking paper jutting out all through the object so that it ra...

The Goblin and I were on a tube out to Kings Cross station. I watched a delightful two-year-old black boy in a stroller. His mother stood behind him, engrossed in a text message. He looked around the carriage, smiling at all the passengers. He tried to start a conversation with the Goblin, who sat closest to him. The Goblin just glared at him and stared him down. The little boy, in his innocence, continued to chatter on to the Goblin, obviously unused to inhumanity, so I stepped in and had a lovely chat with him. He was smart and articulate and very sweet. Seeing that I had a rapport with the child, the Goblin wanted to bulldoze his way back in. He held up his hand and ordered the child to "High Five!" The boy didn't have a clue what the Goblin was talking about, so the Goblin said, "I'm surprised you don't know what 'High Five' means, with YOUR background!" There was a collective gasp through the entire carriage. The boy's mother looked up f...