Neighbour invents superior method of trolling

A resident of de Beauvoir, Islington, has come up with a solution for one of today’s most pressing issues: how to lambast someone without knowing their twitter handle. The game-changing innovation was first noticed by fellow local, Sally Jones, on her routine walk home on Tuesday afternoon.

‘I saw an A4 notice duct-taped to 12a’s door – it was hard to miss. My first thought was, “oh, maybe Mark and Louise’s friends have left them a friendly note saying hi” or something.’ It was only upon closer inspection that 26 year old Ms Jones realised she was privy to something special.

‘When I took a closer look, I realised that, actually, this wasn’t just a note. It was genius. I feel really quite lucky to have seen this first hand, and for this to have happened on my little street.’

The note reads:

‘Hey fella! How about a more positive input and respect your local environment? Instead of the fly-tipping and disposing of cig-butts into the drainage system! Acting oddly venturing into private land with no business of being there! Not least the absurdity of teasing a cat on leash with no real prospect of free natural enjoyment is questionable, if not abusive! Think you can step up to the mark?

Other locals have been quick to enthuse the pioneering move of anonymous. Raymond Rogers, 74, from “across the way”, says ‘I had no idea that my neighbours were dicks. I am so glad that someone has done the whole street the courtesy of telling us. What this world needs is more acts of kindness like this.’

According to expert troll, @cuckiller, the typed note succeeds on multiple levels. ‘In some ways,’ he tweets, ‘this digitally produced analogue document goes beyond twitter. Theres [sic.] no character limit for a start, and front doors are big so u can say much more. Because its [sic.] typed u don’t know who wrote it and lots of people can c it. And unlike twitter, u get to see people’s faces. The best feature tho is that cos no1 knows who stuck it up no1 can respond. U have the 1st and last word evrytime [sic.]. ‘

As is standard practice, the identity of #banksytroll (as the internet has christened the note’s author) remains under wraps. What is clear though, is that the vigilante of de Beauvoir has and will continue to inspire.

‘I’m glad I got to see it before it was taken down,’ reflected Ms Jones. ‘I like John upstairs, but I can hear him shit. Finally I can let him and the rest of the street know.’

London Effluvia

I’ve started to wonder whether some Londoners would prefer the open sewers that used to flow freely through our streets, converging in the biggest sewer of them all, the Thames. Since the big stink of 1858 got up the noses of the Whigs and Tories, we’ve engineered all human effluvia underground. Now it journeys beyond sensorial detection, channelling beneath the surface in the realm of the ancient hidden mystical rivers of London, ending up in some water cleaning plant which, frankly, the less I know about the better.

But some Londoners don’t seem to give a shit about the joys of sanitation, do they.

Not juice

A couple of years ago I was borrising around Pimlico. It was a hot day. I suppose I smelled it before I swerved its light-lit splashes. A ‘gentleman’ was pouring a litre bottle of urine directly in the path of my borrowed bike. Why didn’t he just piss directly in the street? I struggle to see the benefit of bottling multiple pisses up and discharging in one go. Unless it was some sort of political statement (against Boris? The bikes weren’t even his initiative ffs).

Talking of bottle-wazzers, I was walking up Roseberry Avenue when I saw a guy approach a stationary cab, trying to suss out if it was for hire. Straining his eyes in the dusk, craning his head to gain a clearer view, he startled me out of my rhythm with a delighted yelp of realisation:

‘He’s pissing! Oh my god, he’s pissing!’

I’ve often wondered where cabbies ‘went’. I now have conclusive evidence that at least one pulls over on main roads hops in the back of his Hackney and relieves himself in an empty lucozade bottle.

Yesterday I saw something that – for a whole host of reasons – beggars belief. It was bank holiday Monday. I was in Green Park around 3 pm in the blazing sun walking with my sister. It was heaving. We were walking up the path to the tube. We smelled something. Instinctively, we turned to visually investigate the source. A woman. Mid thirties. Wearing a floral floaty skirt, nice pastel cotton tee, a pretty, quirky headband. Surrounded by shopping bags, and two observant similarly casually nicely dressed friends. I saw the baby nappy first. Positioned in the middle of the ring of highstreet branded bags. The woman was squatting over it, skirt hoiked up, her friends poised behind her for balance/ support.

She was shitting. The smell confirmed it. The strained concentration confirmed it. The careful baby wiping process that ensued confirmed it.

There was no baby, so why was there a nappy? It did occur to me that this woman may be afflicted with some issue, but if that is the case, it seems pretty unlikely that this public-park-process is, well, the process, or that her two guardians would have let it come to this. The baby nappy suggests improvisation. Fine. But why in the middle of the park? A park heaving with holidayers on a sunny afternoon. Why no attempt for some more covert location? Behind a tree. In the shade. Why next to the main thoroughfare?

Why was it that nobody else seemed to mind? Was her ostentation so incredulous that people simply didn’t believe what was before their very eyes? Finally – and this is the most pressing question of all – why not poo in the public bathroom that was moments away?

Like a David Lynch, this scene invites endless speculation, but with zero promise of any answers. Frankly you ought just be thankful that your eyes or nose did not bear witness to this inexplicable shit.

Binge(ing)

Not a bin

If there is a hole, vessel, a cavity, a slot, an open gaping non-living mouth in London it will be filled with crap. Often literal crap. The small black sacks with hastily knotted twisted tops filled with dog shit – dumped in lidless residential bins, recycling boxes, a crevice between tree roots, an abandoned cat litter box on the pavement, or just on the side of the road (it’s not on the pavement so it’s okay!). I don’t have a lid to the bin in my front garden. Someone at some point in the mid twentieth century nicked a bin lid for no good reason. And thus they launched an interminable chain of bin lid nickers that spread rapidly from street to street, borough to borough. I had hoped that by leaving mine uncapped I would have broken the chain. Probably not… Lidless-ness, it turns out, is an invitation. People throw their crap bags in my bin daily (with its state of undress it’s probably “asking for it”). The bin men don’t take them away (don’t blame ‘em), so I am accruing a bin full of shit.

Now a bin

People can’t wait to get rid of the black baggies (ugh, ‘baggies’). I look after my parents’ dog sometimes. Norris. He’s only a little thing and produces little bags but walking down the canal through my neighbourhood with a handbag of dog defecation makes me self-conscious. (hello neighbours, hello fellow freelancers, hello hipsters, hello young mums, the elderly, nursery school children, lollypop lady, car that let me cross the zebra crossing, I would politely wave but I have a dog’s lead in one hand and a bag of shit in the other). So I get the urge to discard the dump. But I promise you I don’t do it. In this utterly British internal war - good citizen vs. red-faced decorousness – the former trumps.

Not a bin - by order of the constabulary

By the by, in Islington I once saw an enraged man pick up a discarded doggy-do bag (god I hate that infantilisation of shit) from his side of the street and throw it to the other. ‘Not on my side of the pavement! Not in my back yard!’. With his lame lob the bag just missed the pavement, a car ran it over, the bag burst and chocolate brown shit smeared the shoddily repaired road. Seems like a good metaphor for today’s politics, but I won’t bother explaining why.

When I lived in Pimlico, I tried to throw away a bin. It came with the house. A thirty litre swing lid bin, red, green, blue, and yellow. I didn’t want it and didn’t need it. It was too large to fit into a bin bag, so I lazily loosely encased it in two – one top one bottom. The bin men removed both bin bags, binned them, and left the bin. The bin became a street bin. Endless tourists wheeling their wheelies would spot my bin – the colour of a children’s play area – and respectfully feed their cans wrappers banana skins through its jolly swinging mouth.

When the bin was overflowing the bin men acquiesced and took it away, seeing it, finally, for what it truly was. Rubbish. So now you know – how to throw away a bin in London.

One woman’s day(-to-day)

Two days ago a teenage boy in the street belched loudly and threw the bottle top of his radioactively blue drink at me. Last week (same street) a middle aged builder shouted down from the scaffolding ‘hello love, it’s good to see a woman smile.’ Today I was crossing the road next to my house. A man (late 20s) driving a white van clocked me accelerated towards me bounced over speed bumps swerved at the last minute and laughed as he drove off. To clarify: a man pretended to run me over for lols.

I’m not going to sermonise pontificate or shout. I am not going to state the bloody obvious. But I wonder -

Why was it funny to van-man to give me a scare? So he can go down the pub with his mates and say ‘yeah, boys, gave this blonde a bit of a fright didn’ I. I was like going full pelt over the speed bumps and shit putting my foot down steaming towards her, and then – [hands smacked together] –  swerved at the last minute. Shoulda seen her face. A proper picture. Fuckin’ effin and blindin at me mate.’ Swigs slams and splashes pint to a chorus of bants and laughs.

The builder turns to the scaffold crew and says with warming sincerity, ‘it’s just nice when they smile, boys. Women. Got to be always so effin miserable! If I have to look at the face on my missus every bloody night, least I can have is the smile of nice looking girl to brighten my day.’ Here’s his laugh. He’s got his.

And the teenage boy. (Struggling to invent something for this one). But anyway, here he is, combining his penchant for littering and distaste for unknown women. Not a sophisticated display, but original(ish) – a new generation of ‘lad’, with his mates and blue syrup drink, in a succinct display of not giving a shit.

I am pretty used to getting my narrative written by someone else, getting my self told to me. So today I’ve had a go at writing the narratives of those that made me feel uncomfortable.

It didn’t feel good – presuming and assuming, guessing accents and backgrounds, guessing words. It didn’t feel good speaking for another. But then I want equality – which is not the same as getting even.

Sauna Surprise

I went swimming this morning at my £96 per month gym. I’m not showing off. I didn’t pay for my membership (it was a gift from concerned parents. My concerned parents) and I only swum 50 lengths (in a 20 metre pool) because my childhood asthma is coming back/ I need to give up smoking. I’m 31 for Christ’s sake and should bloody know better. I will give up. At some point in my life I will give up. In the new year perhaps. That’s quite close actually. When I land a full time job I might give up unless it is very stressful.

Anyway. Swum. Swim done. Lumbered out, chest tight earplugs out goggles off into sauna.

Penis.

PENIS draped on ball sack muffled around with dark sweated pubic curls.

‘Sorry’, said its owner. Towel closed back over.

I sat on the lower bench. He and it rather dominated my usual top shelf sweat-spot. Eyes averted. My bench embarrassingly creaking.

'It’ll make that noise even if you yawn’, he said (smiling. I imagine. Though I am still not looking). ‘It won’t break’, reassuring smile this time. Probably.

I took a glance to acknowledge. The towel had crept back. The tip was tucked away - shaft visible - with all the modesty of a nipple tassel but not a spit of the spangled sex appeal.

He feels sorry for me and my cumbersome creaking and sporadic coughing. I feel sorry for him and his hardly hidden head. Perhaps we have reached an accord. A very unsexy not to be repeated hope I get that image out of my head (I’m really not that heavy it’s just the bench) accord.

Empathy for Brexit leavers

Boris, the girl cat with a boy name

The other night, walking alone, a bit tipsy, on the last stretch home, I encountered Boris, one of my cat-friends. Boris often appears from behind a wall, walks beside me keeping pace as I make my way back. And he always stops at the first crossing. Never abruptly. He fluidly turns, making his way back to his wall. Because this is the boundary of his territory. His impasse. Not this time though. Not on this night. ‘Goodbye, Boris,’ I said. But he didn’t stop. ‘Be careful of the road…’ but we were already travelling across it together. We reached the pavement. New ground for Boris. But he seemed pretty confident. Then it struck me. We can go all the way together! But this was just a bleary, barely-lit fantasy. Wasn’t it. I kept walking. Boris kept walking. Sometimes striding ahead. Sometimes lagging behind. Sometimes, stopping to lick the radiator of a car. ‘Boris’ I quietly pressed, peppering these whispered insistences with wordless noises of encouragement, firm-handed strokes. Now I was determined. I’d hardly wished it possible. But this was what I wanted. Here he was, still. A comrade. Moving with me, on my otherwise lonely mundane passage.

 We made it to my gate. This was it. What was my plan once we crossed the threshold? I didn’t know. Was it right to have brought him so far east? So far-right of his territory. Frankly, I didn’t care. It was getting here that mattered and we’d walked, side-by-side, all the way.

 I turned for a moment. Put my key in the door. Flashed back round.

 The bastard had gone.

Last Night in My Garden

This isn’t much of a story.

I was standing in my garden last night. It was dark and the damp, distilling air was drawing, pooling in on on every fibrous, soily, frondy, leafy, and metal surface. Light from my french window cut up the shadow. I stood in both zones, talking on the phone, because it’s the only place I get reception. A blur in the shadow dashed into the light. Stealthy and textured. Eyes. Two tails. One worm-like, flopped at the front, gripped in a mouth; the other big and brushing at the back. A little pink claw-like paw too, hanging from the mouth. A rat in a fox. Being carried into the light.

I saw a fox with a rat in its mouth. It tried to come into my house. 

Will Slim Shady’s (Owner) Please Not Stand Up

I’ve been seeing a lot of nearly-nudes in London’s parks. I found one such tan-maxer in Hyde Park, quite a corpulent fleshly lady, lying spread eagled on the grass wearing nothing but body oil and Brazilian knickers. Her companion was Slim, a neckerchief wearing Chihuahua. I know this to be his name, because she hollered at, back, and after him as he ran around the park barking and stealing sandwiches and sausages out of picnickers hands. But the real jeopardy was not in this terrorist of a dog. It was in the common held concern that his owner might stand up.

Lost Property

So I struggle-disembarked from the 38 bus with a muddle of bags.  Began to cross Essex road, attention divided between traffic and excessive food shop burden.  Something solid fell in my wake.  I’d dropped something.  In the middle of the road.  Too much bloody stuff to carry.  ‘You’ve dropped something’, said a helpful pubescent-boy-voice.  I turned, and beheld a large wooden dildo on the ground behind me.  That’s not from Tesco.  That’s not mine.  ‘BANTER’ shouted the not-quite-teen boy, as he snatched it and ran off.

The Boss

I’m a fast walker.  I travel when I walk. I don’t perambulate.  I don’t stroll.  I never saunter.  I journey.  And so it’s rare that I overhear conversations.  I catch a phrase – discombobulated – hold onto it for a second, but invariably let it go, because usually, it’s senseless.  There was, however, one gem occasion, paces away from my house, where I journeyed through an entire, succinct exchange between father and (let’s say 4 year old) son.  Verbatim:

Son: Are you the big boss now, dad?

Father: Yes son. Yes I am.

Son: Are you going to fire him dad.

Father (with magnanimous, affected regret): Yes son – SIGH – I’m afraid I am.

Son: Are you going to BATTER him, dad?

Shouldn’t let your kids watch Eastenders.