Space Round The Back (2017)

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

There are no animals. No birds, no cats, no foxes. Just desolation, emptiness, conceit. This is the 'gap'. Some people look at this space and see the past. Others look at this 'gap' and imagine the future.

Some people are dealing with realities.

While others consider possibilities.

From Seeing This All Over: De City Tour - 2017/2018.

Road tours were a constant feature of...well life...for so many years. Meeting so many creative people, doing so many creative things. I could listen to the same person as you yet come away with differing ideas/viewpoints/skills...this was always a good thing.

Much new tech. has [for me] sort of killed the impetus to tour as much...but I'm always amazed at the sheer amount of really interesting/challenging/original stuff that continues to happen 'off grid' so to speak when I do/can.

Steve Coel

Iron Shelter - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Iron Shelter

Here -

Where...music is day time dead..

Where...beaten up strangled trees steal fenced air..

Where...pavement shy funeral cars are smokey..

Where...mapped walking is silenced by small group gossip..

Where...sleeping iron sided shelters are brick piled into bulldozed walls..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Apples and Pears - Steve Coel

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

Got another letter...just another reminder...just like all the others...

Then.

Times were different and some will still tell you that if you can remember what you were doing you weren't there. But I remember and 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 Woolies, I went over there and asked for Chick. Don't really know 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 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.

[Originally written/published/distributed - 1988, + Tin Collector: Collected MicroFlashFictions - 2015]

Notes: 

My experiences of old street market stalls that sold medals and badges, random shoes and Sunday morning leather jackets from Saturday night gig venues (if you lost your jacket you sort of knew where you could get it back the following day!).

On just one night out down the Old Kent - a large organised bare knuckle fight in a pub backroom, a person being chased out of another pub, and down the street, by someone with a samurai sword and another person being thrown through a window into a pub...good grief...

Steve Coel

Twisted Ornaments - Steve Coel

Twisted Ornaments

Here -

Where...seagulls congregate to share daytime information..

Where...mudless lanes fracture industry and metal..

Where...cold slab chipped rock fountains are smiling and love struck...

Where...glitter ball glamour is boarded and gig postered..

Where...glass shadows stretch into shoeless avenue..

is the place language comes to die.

*  *  *

Six Month Empty Paper Towns: small communities peopled only by those left behind...nowadays, as far as I can tell, an increasingly older and more reflective group of resilient residents who are daily learning to cope with emptiness and lean times...I can only ever be a visitor to these places, but I am always struck/horrified/bewildered by the underlying despair/bitterness of the conversations...

*  *  *

In my own local community - an hours walk shows all the shades and shapes...the movers...the shakers...the chancers...the winners...the losers of the area...Some are clearly falling between the cracks...the gaps that exist between each moment. Snatches of conversation. Moments of aggression. One day this. One day that.

*  *  *

I am drawn to the loneliness of busy places ...the emptiness of crowded places...what is happening is not on the margins of the community...something has gone is missing...opportunity probably.

O ble mae'r bobl wedi Mynd? / Where have all the people Gone?

Steve Coel

Meic Agored: February, 2025

Steve Coel

Smells of Time

In you comes

in your sad seven year old ironic tracksuit and pair of box fresh

in you comes

looking for deals on the board behind the counter

in you comes

doing quick sums and ordering a dozen shots with your release money which you quickly shares out to punters who aren't interested

 

in you comes

barely missed and completely blitzed, just another forgotten madman hero

in you comes

a hero bent by routine

a hero twisted by addiction

a hero caught in the to and fro of time outside which has turned its back and good riddance

in you comes

smelling of time.

Steve Coel

Half Stolen Buildings

In her regulation daytime armour 

that still cracks 

with broken promises and yesterdays 

coarse park bench whisper, 

the young girl pushes her 

vape shadowed baby carrier 

past boarded window and 

gummed railing.

Her world is the High Street 

where each day a bitter grey tide 

shambles downhill 

towards abandoned blue churches 

and disappearing city light.

And it is here her plastic shoes

will slap into one off needles, 

and it is where, even on dry days

the pavement is wet.

Steve Coel

* * *

I often write quickly so as not to lose the spark of an idea...

Aside: Painting in the studio I am also initially quite spontaneous, because I am in most cases, confident both with what I'm doing and with the materials available I am using. I also like taking photographs of the images I make at all stages, because sometimes impressive/important early stage work can get hidden behind overpainting, scraping back and so on..

Steve Coel

Meic Agored: February, 2025

Steve Coel

False Doors

Here -

Where...shop doors embrace the bubble gum smell of illegal cheap drink..

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

Where...broken promises are public..

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

Where...aimless driving is deliberate..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Band Stand

Here -

Where...top floor swearing is frequent..

Where...poor disguises are deliberate..

Where...slippery couples meet between sheets of harsh fabric..

Where...derelict woods shelter shriveled worlds..

Where...doorstep begging is hasty and mindless..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Lon Ganol

Here -

Where...cheap tables split abandoned doorways..

Where...cliff edge bramble holds litter to ransom..

Where...puzzled footstep is matched with clumsy frail voice..

Where...second hand clipped fashion rails spill strong alcohol and stained toxic mist..

Where...beauty is hooded..

is the place language comes to die.

* * *

Note[s]:

* Previously i've been asked about humour in my narratives. Difficult question to answer really as it's sometimes just out of reach and occasionally even i don't recognise it when it occurs. Go figure.

* I have listened to other creators when they reflect that they are drawn to things, events, places that a lot of people often don't see. I like walking and looking but I also I like listening to places. So I guess both listening to and seeing places might begin to explain the driver for the MicroFlashFiction /experimental narratives here.

Steve Coel

Severed Road - The Right Shadows (2025)

Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel

This severed road blankets the hill. Grey and undemanding it reluctantly 

i

 n

  c

   l

    i

     n

      e

       s 

towards the sea 

creating as it falls

regimented lines of steel 

brown with industrial rust 

that envelops a cowering park.

The park - where...

lovers argue and kiss...

young men drink...

and children play. 

From the sea below 

comes the smell and spell 

of promise, 

as dredgered stones 

rattle loudly on concrete and flesh.

Steve Coel

***

In the studio I am surrounded by the archives and leftovers of previous projects and exhibitions. They are a constant reminder of how ideas either developed or fell apart. Success' and failures I suppose. Having finished The Mercy Path (2024) and Half Stolen Buildings (2024) I have now started placing all my work: MicroFlashFiction, Documentary Fiction Photography and Painting, under an umbrella working title - The Right Shadows (2025).

Again, I'm guessing, work will accumulate in the studio, get mixed up with previous bits and pieces and go off at tangents that I'm currently oblivious to. It's how I like to create...

Steve Coel

Dead Air into Warm Harp

Documentary Fiction Photography

Since I bust my legs down The Works I've had to spend all my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be known. Lost everything now. Still; once I get enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie down The Vulcan, and, often or not, I end up talking to the old girls warming themselves up before they go and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury.

Clink Hotel across the road gets noisy in the afternoon so I usually wonder back into town for a bit of a stretch and go and cadge a cup of tea from Asteys before heading back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk.

Doesn't have time to feel sad really. Not me. Trick I finds, is to forget past and just stick to what I knows. Need change of shoes mind. Guess I'll find some in the box by side door Sunday morning.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

Warm Air into Dead Harp reminds me of so much that is never fixed properly...I noticed a lot of damaged adults growing up...some from the war and too many others from closures of steel works and the docks...I still see damaged adults today, we all do...all ages, from all over...it's never right...never was...Steve Coel

Promise is a Promise

Documentary Fiction Photography

Today - doorway, long corridor.

Place used to be arcade, not now. Shops are long gone, the roofs caved in and now mesh windows are being ripped out by scrappies and decorated courtesy of local youth. No charge. Nice touch that.

So you could say it's quiet round this way now there's nothing left to nick.

Council keeps saying places like this are going to be developed. We'll see.

Meantime it's where I come to spend my days. To finish jobs I been doing during the night. I'll have finished in six months anyway. Do what the fuck they want then. All of them.

And, if they ever finds out what I've been hiding round here won't be any come back.

Promise is a promise.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

In 2015 I completed a series of MicroFlashFictions which I called 'The Tin Collector'.

Spontaneous, improvised short story ideas mainly...responses to the dull echo of a so called change in the local area...older people talked about the past and little else, younger people about an unknown, uncertain future...Promise is a Promise was an observation of a guy who would just sit all day among the bricks and demolished area behind the High Street...talking to himself...

Steve Coel

Don't Swim in Canals

Documentary Fiction Photography

Some people just don't like reading instructions. Or being given them it would seem.

Even now Thinking back to that night it's still possibly the saddest excuse I've heard, and, after so many visits, over so many years, I'd thought I'd seen it all.

I hadn't.

So she fancied a quiet drink. Right now. Of course this meant she'd have to visit the nearest, and possibly least welcoming pub to her home. She could have had a quiet drink at home. But, this inevitably led to many distractions, the least being her mobile, the most being...well it was mainly her mobile actually.

Her face however, was a familiar one in the pub and which meant people knew when she was to be left well alone. She simply had a way about her she did. But the lads in the corner didn't know this did they? No they didn't.

You'd have thought the message posted behind the bar was warning enough. Oh But no.

Even a quiet word, followed by a series of worried glances from the bar man were ignored. 

The lads evening ended abruptly with a last cold drink and a chaser of warm blood.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Notes -

Way back when...I wrote a whole heap of experimental London short fictions...exercises mainly, printed up and placed in the alternative sections of various outlets in the South East...I was beginning to learn what I liked to write about and perhaps as importantly, what I could do and what I couldn't...Apples and Pears was probably, no pun intended...the pick of the bunch...

Steve Coel, 2025

Empty Corners

Documentary Fiction Photography

Stepping away from the street through a broken two door, customers painfully walk into a high congregation of brown paper and leather. Inside; along each damp tired wall, anointed paint quietly peels and unclean fragile carpet, frayed by disappointment, falls into hooded empty corners stacked high with rotting chairs.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Tall Ships - Noticeboard of Dishonesty

Documentary Fiction Photography

It's found up along cobbled visions of forgotten towns in times disputed by all who lived them. In places caught by Pentax and Olympus, children will forever play on empty streets near to crumbled demolished homes. 

Tall ships still hang over street end brick wall in this broken vision with the ships, made by small people whose dreams daily smashed, mirror the horrors of this passing time while close by, crisp tied officials arrive but soon leave as they always have and always will, visitors making quick decisions over local pie and ignored cake. 

Today windowless empty youth painted buildings scatter to wind and sudden downpour as in large open working spaces; in tired, dormant feral communities; few people gather each morning for early shift. Labour here is now too vague, mechanical and undisputed. Tiredness is instant and contagious. Jokes are few, clumsy and dulled by lack of echo. Uniforms, worn in shame, are cheap and ill fitting as they signify nothing but cowardice and lack of respect.

Steve Coel

The Mercy Path

Documentary Fiction Photography

Once you bypass the last starched lightning tree you enter a hillside world of midnight stream and border wire music. Here, across shilling debris and early shadow, blisters of high mist compose movement from iron and broken bone.

Steve Coel

Down the Front

Documentary Fiction Photography

With their stick on smiles all owl eye brown, girls look down on avenues of car metal gutter full with wish and dream.

In these mean times, ripped boyfriends in their hastily bought clothes, shadow money recently hustled from grey figures in badly lit parks. 

This is their place, not yours. It is a space ruptured of romance, empty of mirth, hope, future.

The Right Shadows (2025)

Steve Coel

Whistled Anger

Documentary Fiction Photography

Whistled Anger

Here -

Where...hawthorn tree spaces catch song and memory...

Where...whistled anger cuts through motored gateway..

Where...subtle fingers repeat last nights drunken movement..

Where...painted side street paths splash oiled drug wish on to sullen booted youth..

Where...anonymous blind construction hides skyline humour..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Footfall in Albany

Documentary Fiction Photography

Footfall in Albany

Morning

Is about frail, weightless older men who come into the cafe for their daily three hour coffee, game of cards and who will all talk endless bollocks about non existent winning horses.

Afternoon

Is mainly about shapeless smackheads and local hard core druggies who come into the cafe to settle small debts and to boast about knowing where the next deal is going to happen.

Evening

End of the day for some. Cheap fatty meals and shelter from street pain.

Late Night

Is about 'real money' being made in busy stockrooms of empty shops.

Steve Coel

Rescued Footprints

Documentary Fiction Photography

 

Rescued Footprints

Alongside several boarded up town houses, torn cars are being buttoned into fired up twisted spaces... as the music of early morning neighbourhood footstep is reflected in slow moving traffic that idles and stutters into the yawning high street. 

Close by, bare armed and heavily booted, keyholders arrive in knots of secret glances and reluctant handshakes while patiently adopting the routine of shouldered good nature and long days of empty ambition.

Steve Coel

 

Daytime Armour

Documentary Fiction Photography

Daytime Armour

In her regulation daytime armour still cracking with coarse whispers and yesterdays broken promise, the young girl pushes her vape shadowed baby carrier pass boarded up pub windows. 

Her world is the local high street where each day a bitter grey tide of school friends shamble downhill towards abandoned blue churches and disappearing city light. And it is here plastic shoes will slap into one off needles that litter papered gutters and where, even on dry days, the pavement is always damp.

Steve Coel

Dull Flowers

Dull Flowers

Here -

Where...yesterdays comical events sit buried in vintage blue cement..

Where...blistered streams fall into backyard carpet shed..

Where...dull flowers pilfer hedgerow litter..

Where...stoney-engined vehicle bruises centre lane grass..

Where...weightless men saunter early into cotton hospital shroud..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Nylon Shoe

Nylon Shoe

Here -

Where...straight talking is a cold charmless metallic click..

Where...wind launched building demolition scratches neighbourhood itch..

Where...sharp light falls on damp nylon shoe..

Where...last nights takeaway guides corner walled stumble..

Where...bitter smoke sticks to dark glass passenger..

is the place language comes to die

Steve Coel

Machine Winnings

Machine Winnings

Here-

Where...failure becomes a habit..

Where...values are challenged and always disputed..

Where...machine winnings replace job prospects..

Where...happiness is solitary, forgotten and distant..

Where...teenage anger lasts long into retirement..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Back Pocket

Back Pocket

Here -

Where...frosted symphony bamboo foot bleeds into glass split concrete..

Where...silent fingers cup memory..

Where...bloodied alert eyes are street fierce..

Where...back pocket lamps guide bullied handshake greeting..

Where...muted trolley tight waiting is slow shuffled along wired footpath

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

 

Iron Shelter

Iron Shelter

Here -

Where...pavement shy funeral cars are smokey..

Where...mapped walking is silenced by small group gossip..

Where...sleeping iron sided shelters are brick piled into bulldozed walls..

Where...music is daytime dead..

Where...beaten up fenced trees strangle the air..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Adult Hands

Adult Hands

Here -

Where...illegal plastic high releases urgent stammered step..

Where...solitary private glass is windowed in shoddy single drinking room..

Where...stolen adult hands are nailed..

Where...blown factory wall rage by-pass' toughened water..

Where...sponsored imagination drains away through rusting pipe...

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Paper Bag

Paper Bag

Here -

Where...banned entry is monitored by bored looking glass eye..

Where...cracked machine street furniture empties rigid oil onto skated shoe..

Where...paper bag eating is tin roof sheltered..

Where...curious hands grip tightly bridged water passage way..

Where...alarm bells herd crowds into uniformed wallets of silence..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Hidden Rumour

Hidden Rumour

Here -

Where...spirited cloth tightly holds hidden defence..

Where...painted step reveals rusted night-time dancing..

Where...burnt time walking becomes wall shy and forced..

Where...open doors disperse rumour of stolen memory..

Where...expensive remarks are fake..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

 

Wired Beauty

Wired Beauty

Here -

Where...drowned road happiness is traded for pennies..

Where...beauty is inked into loose skin..

Where...hostel dispute is shop door knuckled..

Where...salted air breathing is painful reminder of loss..

Where...wired thought becomes backroom industry..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Shadows

In the nick of time power station reflection you upgrade yet another dog end and once again slyly check the hidden shank in your Clink Hotel grey. A long time is short here because outside nobody can afford to stand still. Round this way, routine is dictated by coded message from engine, animal and whistle and also by shadows that appear, then disappear, on park borders.  Steve Coel

The Proposal

Cut by masters of dead trades into bitter grey stone is your complete life story. Brief, like you, words from broken parents target elders who created your passing.  Steve Coel

From The Mercy Path (2024)

Lowland Feather

...after years spent on The Mercy Path absorbing wire sharp whistled song, farewells are still given through brick house window and muddied wall...

...close by, as carefully baited lowland feather slaps its muted surface, ripple stone water stumbles into ice age grass bank...and through gaps in tree tired stone walls, wild horses fret and gather as rutted horizons shadow mountain valley...

...(there) out on the scarab pathed moor, where lonely birds pleat their song into ferned memory, old feet, leisured by a lifetime of pain, shuffle slowly homewards...

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings ( 2024)

Drunken Memory

Here - 

Where...small feet carry heavy living..

Where...polluted idle engine blows rust water into lipped gutter..

Where...emergency words remain anonymous..

Where...stone roof collapse haunts drunken memory..

Where..rock pocket begging is sandwiched between road crossing and loose fingers..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

 

Kiosk Cards

Here -

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

Where...nylon jumpered youth blankly congregate..

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

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

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

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

Coat Collar Romance 

Here -

Where...shaded front window blanks out screamed memory..

Where...watered gravel road hides handshake meeting..

Where...cheap endeavour is forced..

Where...emotion is mid-air and blank eyed..

Where...coat collar romance is early evening and drunk..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

From Half Stolen Buildings (2024)

Charity Coffee

Here -

Where...bladed vape chatter tumbles into unlit corridor..

Where...fragmented sour heeled machinery lies idle..

Where...cracked glass memory leans into elbowed temper..

Where...crippled time shelters from hillside churched solitude..

Where...rusty thimble alcoholics drink cold cartons of charity coffee..

is the place language comes to die.

Steve Coel

Digbeth

Saturday Night

Sunday Afternoon

Documentary Fiction Photography

Steve Coel

..Experimental Narrative..

Iron Shelter

Iron Shelter

Steve Coel

Here -

Where...music is day-time dead..

Where...beaten up strangled trees steal fenced air..

Where...pavement shy funeral cars are smokey..

Where...mapped walkway is silenced by small group gossip..

Where...sleeping iron sided shelters are brick piled into bulldozed walls..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography

Steve Coel

Deaf Ear

Deaf Ear

Steve Coel

Here -

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

Where...anger is buttery..

Where...doorstep begging is hasty and youthful..

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

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

is the place language comes to die.

Here -

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..

is the place language comes to die.

Here -

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..

is the place language comes to die.

Here -

Where...sad walled archives crowd 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..

Where...bitter tunes are formed around rough gateway..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography

Oiled Doorstep

Oiled Doorstep

Steve Coel

Here -

Where...locked doors open to sharp knocking..

Where...clotted shoes clamber over torn stile, delayed stone and heathland water..

Where...fractured ganglines decide night-time movement..

Where...ribboned plastic roof top windows glisten on oiled doorstep..

Where...seagulls congregate to share daytime information..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography

Timed Silence

Timed Silence

Steve Coel

Here -

Where...silence is timed..

Where...stern booted smiles are frequent..

Where...folded arm argument frames evening entertainment..

Where...car lights halt hooded debt collection..

Where...hi-rise threats are sprayed on dumpster and metal security door..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography

Grey water

Grey Water

Steve Coel

Here -

Where...hollow buildings shadow painted monument..

Where...decaying plastic childhood lies perched on slopes of tall stripped tree..

Where...repaired jigsaw roads wait for seasonal pacing and frosty morning..

Where...starched wrinkled skin sticks to stretched bone..

Where...daily trauma functions alongside passing rumour..

is the place language comes to die.

Documentary Fiction Photography