Nice Breakfast [ Extracts ]

Nice Breakfast is about a female door person. A threat last heard in prison, has been directed at her and she really needs to find out if the threat is a real one and deal with it quickly. Before things turn really, really nasty.

*

Makes a nice breakfast me. When I's got the time. Keep it simple I says. Works for me every time. Breakfast pretty much sums up the way I approaches most things in my life. But I's still thinking, thinking too much actually, about where I was made the mistake that might just prove to be the game changer.

See; time inside can be time well spent for some. But first you got to adapt and get used to different ways of doing things. There is, for example, a particular noise which you either get used to or you don't. If you's been in you knows exactly what I's been talking about. Like a quiet scream is what it sounds like, like a huge cry for mercy is what it really is. Only mercy don't ever come until it's all over and too late.

Steve Coel

From 'Tin Collectors', 2015

In the Blood

You's probably seen my picture. More than likely in the papers. Looks a bit different now. Big fella then like. Once done lot of adverts for the tele. Today things changed, can't stick jobs too long, nerves shot see. All started when I was just a kid. See Dad managed to talk his way onto shift at Ellington. So me and Dad and his mates got to spend time underground like they'd been doing in the valley since they all left school. Laugh it was, cos we's all on holiday with the club at the time. Mum was furious. As it goes years just shot by. And I wasn't laughing after my last time down. Cos after 15 hours digging only came back up with me best mates arms. Didn't want my picture in the papers then. Trust me.

Steve Coel

From 'Tin Collectors', 2015

Apples and Pears

Got another letter today. 

Just another reminder. 

Just like all the others.

Then.

Times were different and some still say if you remember what you were doing you weren't there. But I remember. It was great. Saturday nights dancing at the 'Apples and Pears' with all the other Mods and then off we'd all go Sunday morning to Southend or Margate, for a laugh. For me though it only took one big mistake to make all the good things stop and that was seeing that stupid card in the pub window down the Old Kent.  All it said was, 'Fence - Good Money, Ask for Chick Before Closing'. So, for a dare really, next Saturday, after listening to new singles with the girls down Woolworths, I went over there and asked for Chick. Don't really understand what it all meant back then. Do now.

Now.

Down the market this afternoon, people commented about my lovely sixties hairstyle and how it suits me, some even asked after mother. But I don't like talking, never did, so I just got on with things. I mean, after all those years inside I learnt to keep myself to myself. And as for mother, well least said really. So here I am. I keep myself clean and live off the money I got given on release. It's what they owe me after all, seeing as how I've kept my mouth shut all these years. So when each new letter arrives like the one today, I'll read it just once and put it away with the others. There's no way round it, I am what I am, a rich woman with no life.

Pity mother isn't alive to share it with me really.

Steve Coel

From 'Tin Collectors', 2015.

Broken Doorways

Here -

Where...slim smiles are given at shop exits and short change is expected..

Where...suspicious tin badge statements are worn like dismissed broken attitude..

Where...nervous parked cars are hidden from stolen eyes..

Where...beauty is hooded..

Where...wild animals pass through broken work door..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel

Deaf Ear - Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

Here -

Where...loyalty is sought and funded through dark glass..

Where...anger is buttery..

Where...door step begging is hasty and youthful..

Where...brave words are thrown away with cheap lager and soapy grey gritted water..

Where...curled up broken yard hideaways become legend..

Where...layered sounds of gated dog and broken motor serenade gloomy high street..

Where...cheap toys are solitary on pavement and stolen trolley..

Where...flagless memory walks sullen and dead down late night dual carriageway tunnel..

Where...simple slogans are stamped hard on tourist lamp post..

Where...lost faces merge with elderly condemned brick..

Where...early sandal foot death lays down grass foundation..

Where...shallow drunk opinion dominates afternoon decision making..

Where...teenage defence is held tightly to deaf ear..

Where...clumsy stapled barriers warn away passing neighbourhood shadows..

Where...off grid roads disappear through unpleasant fields of illegal chambered stubble..

Where...sad walled archive crowds day time sky..

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

Where...anonymous kiosk cards are pierced carefully on stolen rusty spike rods..

Where...blistered nickel punches into broken fence..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel

From 'Yesterdays Broken Promise'

In your spring hat, tied with lost string, you search the free paper for clues to which day you now finds yourself waiting. And, as you well knows, waiting on the corner beat today in the rain for the next delivery, is getting you plenty of disturbed glances from local windows and trolley men...the steady clump of your wet shoe against cracked kerbstone drunk is also shadowing a high street roaring with anger over closure and debt and is where even the most fucked up has memories when called upon. 

So; you's been shadow hunting. You fucker. Isn't nice. Know what I means? And it sure doesn't look as if it is going to end well either, because peoples already got their mobiles out and others are instinctively putting their hands over stash's and stolen wallets.

From one of the stickered shop windows a tidy looking young women is shaking a weary head at the nasty row growing on the pavement outside. It was always about dodgy deals and money owed. Always. And always the same exhausted faces. Sound of blues fast approaching up the street usually moves on most, but not all. And CCTV[s] are already being clicked off, wiped or removed.

And all the time is snatch's of stoned smiles floating through smoked windows of passing stolen number plates. Everyone knows the street cliche's and seems to love them round here. And not ironically, ironically.

Documentary Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel

Blistered Nickel

Here -

Where...vital instinct survives by kicking inflamed fragile nightmare..

Where...sad walled archive crowds day time sky..

Where...banked torn tree fence collapses on to wired market..

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

Where...anonymous kiosk cards are pierced carelessly on stolen rusty spiked rod..

Where...blistered nickel punches into broken brick..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary  Fiction Photography 

Steve Coel