The Wet Shift [ Extracts ]
Time was he'd be with the other workers heading south after another all night wet shift. But not this morning. This morning he's still invisible in his toasted brickwork hat and waking up after a nights sleep on the butchers slab that rests buried in the dark silted low tide beach alongside the fast moving gravy.
Busy checking that the hidden key and twist are still in his dead mans waistcoat he slowly begins his own journey south of the river to his cardboard hostel room, electric sheets, liquid breakfast and a day full of grey moods, careless thought and burnt cake.
Paper Towns
All along the Mercy Road in six month empty paper towns elderly people in torn slippers walk painfully along iron grit footpaths. Carrying cotton bags half full with out of date tins of meat and dried fruit they chatter to each other about childhood, romance and warm hands. Life for each of them will end here, these places once called home, and their shared memories will soon be forgotten as nature wipes away each doorstep dream and bridal curtain.
Dead Air into Warm Harp
Since I bust my legs down The Works I's been spending my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be told. Lost everything now I has. Still; once I's got enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie in The Vulcan. And; more often than not, I ends up chatting to the old girls warming themselves up before they goes and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury. Clink Hotel across the road tends to get noisy in the afternoon so I wanders back into town for a bit of a stretch and goes and cadges a cup of tea from Asteys before I heads back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk. Really I doesn't have time to feel sad. Not me. Trick I finds is to forget past and stick to what I knows. Needs change of shoes mind. Probably find some come Sunday in box side of hostel door.
