i’m not being funny but
did you ever stumble half pissed into an east london morning when you’re sour like cranberry,
hang off the phone in a box on high holborn begging your sister to let you in cos
you lost your keys at the jazz cafe
in camden town
and stupid cow she screams but you’ll cop to it, catch the 23 with the loose change in your
pocket and stand outside in the sunday market waiting for the keys to land violent
at your feet, scoop them up fuck’s sake this lock is complicated.
you alright? you say to your italian housemate who hates you,
hates england, hates the english,
who eats her single muller light yoghurts on the fire escape with the view of the white chapel,
a few feet from where they found jack the ripper’s first kill,
but end of the day: the rent is cheap and you are too,
knackered from your unpaid internship, staying out til 4am at the roxy on oxford street,
swearing down you got felt up by the ghosts of sid vicious joe strummer in the thickness of
the cellar, before you get chucked out by a bouncer, too drunk to be there,
then you sleep through the day, eat soup cold from the tin - dont slag it off it’s no sin,
it’s economical.
oi oi they say in two rooms off murder mile, some warehouse rave in epic style
and in all fairness, you missed the last tube so now it’s tinny speaker in the garden nextdoor
to the kindly killer, no fucking filler, not ever. you think you’re clever mate? with your bloke
from arctic monkeys hair and them skinny jeans, leather
jacket. get out of it.
ride the top deck of a red bus for 90p saying you used to get 9 sweets for that, now it’s london fog and what?
a can of rio from the offy, mixed with glen’s voddy, snake of river at your elbow,
does your head in when it’s too slow
but leave it out son, this graffiti lane’s a whole old world: the bard got barred round the
corner, curtain theatre hidden under rubble innit, you heard that?
nothing personal, they just ran out of room for the rest
and the best tesco is like 5 minutes away, that’s got to count for something.
but did you ever buy something from columbia flower market for the twenty second rush of pure virtue,
or walk down the regents canal eyeing up balcony flats that will never be for you,
or snog a city boy for the story,
or walk three miles home in a blaze of glory cos you braved the goose-shit slurry of the
serpentine for six minutes in your new look bikini,
always pulling something down to cover your arse; maybe some day you’ll grow into it.
you what? i'm the hottest shit in here, ain’t one thing i’d change about me.
crack on anyway,
cheers you say,
cheers to the pervy bloke in one stop when you’re topping up the electric stick,
skirt round kiefer sutherland is it? shooting the new series of 24 in your neck of it,
christmas at libertys fingering the glitz, soho square thick with media types but you’re too shy so it’s
never gonna happen for you -
it’s a wind up, london -
well good from the outside, cracked up on the inside,
but on the plus side you’re young and it’s 2013, do you know what i mean? and your primark
ballet shoes may be dank and weak in the dirty rain,
but white van man calls you a fit slag, you’re running past fast down the south bank and it’s
fancy a shag? you’ll laugh about it later.
oh don’t be a twat, it’s just summer.
swear down you saw winehouse at the pub in elephant and castle, that you swam in the fountain in trafalgar,
that you once gave directions to paxman and it’s cool
but the british museum’s a tomb and
you’re ashamed of what your country stole,
that you touched an exhibit at the imperial war museum with your own two in defiance of the
sign after you sat in their archive and absorbed what the allies ignored until it was too late,
then got smashed watching prince will and kate,
your mum calling her mum a chav;
all that bloody class drama. better be rich and/or thin to not be a minger.
flash new trainers, 5am on the dot
and it’s proper
to fly down tower hill with the dawn and the ravens, losing the plot,
but always with the best will in the world.
did you ever stumble half pissed into an east london morning when you’re sour like cranberry,
hang off the phone in a box on high holborn begging your sister to let you in cos
you lost your keys at the jazz cafe
in camden town
and stupid cow she screams but you’ll cop to it, catch the 23 with the loose change in your
pocket and stand outside in the sunday market waiting for the keys to land violent
at your feet, scoop them up fuck’s sake this lock is complicated.
you alright? you say to your italian housemate who hates you,
hates england, hates the english,
who eats her single muller light yoghurts on the fire escape with the view of the white chapel,
a few feet from where they found jack the ripper’s first kill,
but end of the day: the rent is cheap and you are too,
knackered from your unpaid internship, staying out til 4am at the roxy on oxford street,
swearing down you got felt up by the ghosts of sid vicious joe strummer in the thickness of
the cellar, before you get chucked out by a bouncer, too drunk to be there,
then you sleep through the day, eat soup cold from the tin - dont slag it off it’s no sin,
it’s economical.
oi oi they say in two rooms off murder mile, some warehouse rave in epic style
and in all fairness, you missed the last tube so now it’s tinny speaker in the garden nextdoor
to the kindly killer, no fucking filler, not ever. you think you’re clever mate? with your bloke
from arctic monkeys hair and them skinny jeans, leather
jacket. get out of it.
ride the top deck of a red bus for 90p saying you used to get 9 sweets for that, now it’s london fog and what?
a can of rio from the offy, mixed with glen’s voddy, snake of river at your elbow,
does your head in when it’s too slow
but leave it out son, this graffiti lane’s a whole old world: the bard got barred round the
corner, curtain theatre hidden under rubble innit, you heard that?
nothing personal, they just ran out of room for the rest
and the best tesco is like 5 minutes away, that’s got to count for something.
but did you ever buy something from columbia flower market for the twenty second rush of pure virtue,
or walk down the regents canal eyeing up balcony flats that will never be for you,
or snog a city boy for the story,
or walk three miles home in a blaze of glory cos you braved the goose-shit slurry of the
serpentine for six minutes in your new look bikini,
always pulling something down to cover your arse; maybe some day you’ll grow into it.
you what? i'm the hottest shit in here, ain’t one thing i’d change about me.
crack on anyway,
cheers you say,
cheers to the pervy bloke in one stop when you’re topping up the electric stick,
skirt round kiefer sutherland is it? shooting the new series of 24 in your neck of it,
christmas at libertys fingering the glitz, soho square thick with media types but you’re too shy so it’s
never gonna happen for you -
it’s a wind up, london -
well good from the outside, cracked up on the inside,
but on the plus side you’re young and it’s 2013, do you know what i mean? and your primark
ballet shoes may be dank and weak in the dirty rain,
but white van man calls you a fit slag, you’re running past fast down the south bank and it’s
fancy a shag? you’ll laugh about it later.
oh don’t be a twat, it’s just summer.
swear down you saw winehouse at the pub in elephant and castle, that you swam in the fountain in trafalgar,
that you once gave directions to paxman and it’s cool
but the british museum’s a tomb and
you’re ashamed of what your country stole,
that you touched an exhibit at the imperial war museum with your own two in defiance of the
sign after you sat in their archive and absorbed what the allies ignored until it was too late,
then got smashed watching prince will and kate,
your mum calling her mum a chav;
all that bloody class drama. better be rich and/or thin to not be a minger.
flash new trainers, 5am on the dot
and it’s proper
to fly down tower hill with the dawn and the ravens, losing the plot,
but always with the best will in the world.
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Originally from London, UK, Harriet is an MFA Fiction candidate at Temple University. Her work is published or forthcoming in New Letters, Mslexia, Five on the Fifth, and elsewhere. It has been shortlisted by the Irish Writers' Centre Debut Novel Competition and longlisted by the Desperate Literature Prize for Fiction and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Contest. She was a Writing Fellow at the 2026 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.
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