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Copyright Seeing it First Hand 2026 | Theme by ThemeinProgress
Written by jackbrewis
I sit here half-dead on this rattling train to Wales, and my mind starts cranking out its cheap carnival movie, clear as the sour smell drifting from the toilet in the empty carriage ahead. there I was. cotton candy in the air, popcorn grease, the merry-go-round wheezing like an old whore on her last trick. […]
the winter sun blasts through tinted Welsh windows, and my skin feels it all at once, sudden and warm after the cold grey miles. through the glass, the valleys roll on soft and endless, the long grass bending and lifting in the winter wind like it’s breathing slow and easy with the land. I drift
two days of nothing in this little bedroom cell, tins of super-strength lager stacked like golden buddhas on the nightstand, lucky strikes burning one after another till the air’s a thick blue smoke. and me, pounding the keys or staring at the ceiling where the cracks look like roads I’ll never take. headache again, that
the grey voice crackled over the PA like some old drunk clearing his throat in the dark, spitting out the names of places nobody really believed in anymore. platform three, homeward bound, cold enough to crack. five more inches had fallen in the night and had gone to slush, working its way into the holes
crank the burner till the flame goes that sick blue, and throw in those greasy little capers, let them jump around like drunk bastards on a hot tin roof, anchovies too, those smug salty pricks strutting like they own the pot. slice the onions thin, onions crying their cheap tears, garlic stinking up the room
forty years on, and still I have my small spoon and small chipped cup from Trinity College, Cambridge — sacred little relics, warm in my hands like talismans from another life. last night the reunion surged through me: red wine dark and heavy, escargots glistening in garlic butter, and a rich bloody fillet of lamb.
the barns bulge with a perverse rot, heaps of fruit gone black and swollen, produce twisted in mildew and blight under the long dead eye of the sun. and out on the land the cattle fall, one by one, legs buckling into the dust like broken prayers nobody’s listening to anymore. frustration sworn into every
here I am, sitting in the heat of the subway train, watching this blind girl across the aisle, her fingers crawling over some textbook like it’s a lover’s back. those pages are slick, white, gleaming under the dizzy fluorescent lights, little bumps raised up just enough for her to feel the secrets — technical diagrams,
tonight the soup again, with the same crusty bread as Saturday — only tonight I threw in some fava beans from the corner shop. I’d gone down there for the paper and a few other things, and there was that dirty old window-box overflowing from above, poor Mrs Rodriguez up top with her hand trembling
Hyde Park on a Sunday when the sun’s got its boot on your neck. kids on plastic scooters scraping the hot concrete like they’re trying to file the day down to nothing. bicycles with training wheels squeaking through the legs of mums and dads who just want a bench before the ice cream turns to
the train stops — some mechanical fault — and through the glass of the passenger car, I see her: a great Bengal beast, powerful and menacing, moving slow beyond the window. and I close my eyes. and it could have been the swelter of a harsh Indian summer, Calcutta due north on the Express out
his nine-year-old loved her nursery, and she loved climbing trees, and reading her books about history, flowers, and trains. and she loved her father, and he thought of her as he buffed his black Oxford brogues from Loakes in London. and he thought of her again when he ironed his shirt — how she smiled
Truck stop glowing under fluorescence, bloodshot eyes everywhere—long-haul drivers slumped like ghosts, builders with cement dust in their hair, and travelling salesmen chasing the next few quid or two. Cheap knives scraping plates, sad memories soaked into the formica like old coffee. I’m waiting for Mary in her red and white pinstripe pinafore. Above the
those were the days when nothing hurt yet, pedalling like a dumb kid through the maize fields of Southern Africa, dust choking the air, wire fences ripping at your legs if you got too close, the sun baking everything into one long stupid dream. then bam, over the handlebars, eating dirt, picking bloody gravel out
there I was, rattling along through the grey English drizzle, the underground train clicking under my feet, when I spotted her across the aisle — dark hair falling wild, eyes like midnight streets — and I leaned over, heart going that crazy beat, and asked if I could take her photo, just a quick one
the humidity comes down heavy over the whole sweating city, and we’re all gasping on the eastbound underground, choking on air thick as soup, the train rattling through the black tunnels like some endless iron beast hungry for more souls. toddlers wail and groan in their sticky seats while their mothers bend low, murmuring soft
my daughter pointed at it through the green murk and said, “Look, Daddy, Neptune’s crown.” it was just a goddamn hubcap off a Ford Mondeo, once chrome-bright and spinning proud on some salesman’s ride, half-shiny even when the rest of the car was coughing rust. one day the clips gave up — like everything else
the horn blows wild. tidal wave, six to one, 3:35 sharp, the bell clanging, and there she goes, the grey ghost streaking over Sandown’s green lung. punters lean into the dream, eyes wild, hearts pounding against the rail, while Mary — sweet Mary of the quick laugh — slides the coldest pint across the oak,
the sky over Jesus Green is one big hangover, black and bloated, hanging there like a drunk who won’t leave the bar. it’s waiting, holding, ready to let it all go in one long miserable rush. then it starts. I look up at the shitty streetlight with a sign dangling off it, faulty, please report,
I needed petrol – 5 litres to get me there and the rest for the process. A small price to pay, running on empty, the urine already cold on my winter jeans, stinking on my frozen legs, a dreadful trembling fear. the hard stench of black tobacco fills my nostrils, my last few cigarettes, another
I drop a sugar cube into the glass, and it fizzes up through the cheap vodka and warm champagne. and you grin that crooked grin, and we mumble on about paintings and books and little flower shops that smell like life. the spaghetti sauce is bubbling on the stove, that tired chink-chink against the pot
that summer morning arrived hot and sticky, the air thick and close, bright sun blasting through the kitchen window while the girls tore around the place scribbling homework frantic, yanking plimsolls from under beds, hunting lunch boxes, stuffing in raisins and cucumber slices and little yoghurt tubs – all that packed-lunch madness before the school
the railway tracks hum all night like a drunk’s heartbeat, and come seven in the morning, the yellow bastard starts gnawing the street — teeth filthy, breath of diesel and broken stone — ripping up clean concrete that never hurt nobody, hunting for pipes for a wage so that some engineer can feed his kids,
I sat on the broken porch steps with a warm beer going flat between my knees, watching that mangy cat take the sparrow out of the air like it was nothing. the bird came down still flapping, one wing bent wrong, blood already at its beak. the cat pinned it gentle, almost tender, then bit
she blew in after the lunch bells had faded, Sunday, round two in the afternoon, beautiful in her pale whirl, dancing and floating between aisles like some mad angel in the vortex air of the slow train rumbling toward London. suspended there, afloat in the rattle and sway of the rails, she drifted into the
the talk drags on all night, two old bastards mumbling into the black hours about pensions and politicians and how the world’s circling the drain. they never once touch the real rot — the wars that chewed up their youth, the women who walked out and never looked back. it’s a Christmas lunch, some half-arsed
I shove the door open at this café on Milton Road, the handle all chewed up with rust bites and pits. the place reeks of burnt bacon and old grease, and it hits you in the gut, hard. “Coffee, black, eight sugars please.” I stare out the smeared window. across the street there’s a hardware
in the café on Rue Lepic, I sit with a little green fairy in front of me, the absinthe gone louche and cloudy now, a slow swirling storm in the glass that brings its own dull and necessary release from the absolute. the flavours move through the mouth in their old way — fennel, star
rugby season in Cambridge, last night’s training all vigorous and unforgiving under those floodlights, oranges sliced and quartered for halftime, the sharp acid juice stinging like fire on cracked lips. then into the scrum for that final mad push, shoulders crashing into shoulders, stubble scraping stubble, and the full-time whistle blowing clean across the field.
I’m sunk deep in this old armchair, the one with the springs poking through like bad memories, and the room’s half-lit, half-dead, snow still spitting at the window. the clock’s oak pendulum swings back and forth, steady as a slow heartbeat, counting me out. I’m just letting go, sliding down easy into the booze and
marked cards and letters filled the top drawer of the old writing desk — two long years of them, correspondence and poems and notes of love and want, all folded away in the quiet dark. he remembered the gate to her front door, the narrow path through the garden where lavender and rosemary and basil
late in the season again — the way I’m late for everything that matters — and there they hang, those dead hydrangea heads, brown and crisp as paper lanterns left out in the rain, still clinging to stems that don’t give a damn, pushing out new blossoms anyway, pink and smug, like the world saying
it’s tough trying to miss them on that black path before dawn, stumbling half-drunk on sleep with your eyes still glued shut from last night’s whiskey. you try, Christ you try, squinting into the nothing, but it always ends the same: a wet pop under the shoe and the morning gets its first taste of
they threw money at you once, from the iced-up bow of the Mary Jane, some drunk tourist boat full of assholes with cameras, snapping away at your big, beautiful bulk sliding through the water like a blue dream on a good day when the bottle’s half-full. cameras clicking, oohs and fucking aahs, love pouring out
