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Copyright Seeing it First Hand 2026 | Theme by ThemeinProgress
Written by jackbrewis
clothes pegs hung in a long sad line on the wire, that thin silver line stretched across the backyard of the world like a railroad track to nowhere, and there they are, those little wooden people, those clipped-up saints, dancing to the secret jazz of the morning breeze, rocking back and forth, this way, that […]
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
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
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
Saturday night in the pub, and the old man sat hunched over his plate like the weight of every wasted year had finally pinned him there. he sneezed into the crook of his elbow, the same childhood tic that eighty-odd years couldn’t burn out of him. a long, glistening strand of snot stretched from his
haze, red lips parted just enough to promise trouble, and me with my battered brass Zippo from ’86, hinge still catching like it remembered every heartbreak, grinding the wheel slow till the sooty flame whooshed up wild, orange-blue dancing the old cliche dance, kerosene stinging sweet right in the veins. she sucked hard on that
and so the boy tormented them, day after day, those workers on the hot African farm, until they wouldn’t bring his tea and biscuits anymore, hands trembling at the thought of him — that pale cruel child with his secret games. sometimes he’d slide it up his sleeve, where it tickled and crawled against his
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
he dressed wild as a dream, those striped trousers flashing like railroad tracks under the sun, top hat bowler perched crazy on his head, long coat flapping in the wind off the river, gaudy shirt blooming colours like some mad flower in the grey city streets, eyeglasses swinging on a silver chain, clinking soft against
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 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,
in the pub, at my little table, yesterday’s paper screaming about Blair’s little love note to Bush — Tony, I’ll hold your coat while you blow up the world — a warm gin and tonic sweating like a guilty priest, and a tin of cashews gone soft because who gives a fuck. The country pretends
lovers paint hearts into the frost on windscreens, their breath fogging the glass like cheap sex in a doorway. rain comes down soft and useless on rows of scooters hunched in the alley, seats glazed with ice, waiting for some fool to chip it off with a credit card that’s already maxed out. frozen cars,
this fucking heat won’t quit, sweat pooling in every crease of this rotten carcass, another nightmare, third one this week, crawling out of the sheets like a rat with its throat cut. I can’t even remember what the dream was, just that high-pitched whine in my skull when I snapped awake, nothing else breaking the
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
the humidity comes down heavy over the whole sweating city, and we’re all gasping there 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
the bar hasn’t changed, neon bleeding red down the walls, smoke hanging in the air like it’s got nowhere better to be, and I’m on the stool next to the one nobody’s sitting on, where Uncle Patrick used to park himself with a Campari glowing in his fist like something he’d cut out of himself.
the body, broken like a sack of bones and meat, floating quietly on the flat, endless sea beneath a low grey sky; no ripple, no hurry, just the slow swell lifting and lowering him, gentle as a sigh. no fight left, no scream, no prayer. he drifted like a cork, arms out, face half to
Christmas again, Jesus, another one. London’s East End. her heels stab the wet pavement like they’re trying to kill it, clack-clack, clack-clack, some secretary’s last fuck-you to the day. everybody running for the Underground or the pub, same difference — heat, noise, cheap beer that tastes like rust and lament. peanuts in cloudy glasses, napkins
blow by blow, the drummer’s foot stomps that pedal like she’s kicking the world in the ribs, cymbals crashing silver in the dim, hi-hat chick-chick-chick in a wild solo to nowhere and everywhere. there she plays under the hot spotlight, the girl with the brushes and the furious heart, beating it out while the room
forty years on, and still I have my small spoon and my 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, the rich bloody fillet of lamb, old
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 and
stiletto snaps sharp on concrete, ankle caves in with a wet twist of pain. platform 2, breathless and running late for the 6.45 to London, the dawn cold slicing through the bones. her lips crack audibly in the frost, Marlboro smoke curling warm and bitter around a flushed face shadowed by a sheepskin hat, arms
outside, on a spread of lawn behind the fishpond, the heat of the day finally lifting. dinner with grandfather. tender pepper chicken, a splash of water, the old man talking — a table of remembered wisdom, the same stories I’ve heard all my life and only now begin to understand. pockets of cropped moonlight break
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
and the buzzer short-circuits like a mad trumpet in the wires, brrrrap-brrrrap-brrrrap, blast after blast ripping down the quiet hallway, salvo after salvo bursting into the black night outside, echoing off the peeling walls. and she’s there, right on time, bang on the dot, and his gut twists with that old primal howl for love
I sat in the corner booth, sipping a warm pint that tasted faintly stale, watching him across the dim pub like he was the main attraction. he was mid-60s, easily. the place was quiet, a few scattered patrons like shadows, him alone by the bathroom door like he’d lost track of time. he zipped his
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.
across the wastes they rode, Crimea first, then Warsaw. then south, and west again. the horses hammered the flats, hooves kicking up the frozen dirt. the empress sat wrapped in furs, her face set against the wind from Riga – Sophie of Zerbst once, a German girl, now all the Russias. she moved fast. God
Gare de Lyon, that stupendous station, spits you out into Le Train Bleu, all that gold-plated nonsense from the old days hanging there like a drunk’s memories, chandeliers dripping light on the suckers below, paintings of green fields nobody ever worked because they were too busy screwing the maid. I’ve got a table in the
there she is behind the marked oak bar, that Irish angel with the black hair falling like midnight rain, serving up the warmest smile you ever saw, pulling a perfect pint, slow and creamy, her eyes shining like Dionysus himself in drag, pouring out the madness. red wine flowing free now, warm in the throat,
I let myself in Monday evening, spare key on the green plastic tag, three months of unpaid rent and a smell in the hall that already told me the rest. and there you are. dangling in the middle of your one-room shithole, toes pointed south, shame finally heavier than the rest of you. good rope,
it was a big bastard of a project the first time I saw the house, the kind of dumb hope you buy when you still believe in forever. the front fence — cast iron, 1940s, rising off its brick columns like it owned the street. proud. solid. untouched by the rot that had taken everything
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
it blows in, that sour stink from the bins, drifting past Tournament House and down the alleyway like some old ghost of the city, rolling right onto platform 7 at Paddington, where the trains howl and the people rush in the endless movement of coming and going. he’s leaning against a cold wall, biding his
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.
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
I picked up the scrap of shopping-list paper from the kitchen counter, the one with the faded blue lines, and there it was — her handwriting, still the same after twenty wild years, looping and sure as the first time she wrote “I love you” on a napkin in that Mexican restaurant in Smith Street
I was hunkered in my usual booth at the Orford, the one they used for Tina and Bobby, deep in the dim corner where the light never quite arrives. tonight I skipped the usual cheap shandy and ordered a few large dirty vodkas, straight, no ice to soften the truth. it went down like a
those gleaming silver travellers of the tar, holy rollers deserting me like faithless friends hitching rides to wilder horizons. they vanish into the night or the blistering noon, tumbling free while I loop the same grimy industrial estate, the same sharp corners, round and round. it’s their one breakout, and I almost envy it –
there I was, sprawled in the dim light of my room, bottle half-empty on the floor, the drink going hot through me, and I thought of Doctor Klitsov in the East End, his little practice with the cracked linoleum and the waiting room that smelled of old magazines and fear. I saw those posters on
I stand here pissing in this narrow shithole of a toilet, staring up through the little slit of a window at a sky the colour of a dead man’s face. little worms of light wriggle across my vision, the cheap vodka still working its way through me. the place smells like something that crawled in
there you stand, close enough to breathe the same hot air, right in the thick of your beautiful humdrum existence — bitter breath from last night’s wild tipple washing over me like cheap communion wine, your forehead glistening under the dirty fluorescent light, alive and shining with the honest sweat of another ordinary morning. follicles
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 schoolyard’s a cheap bar at closing time and he’s the last burning match in the ashtray, like the sun with a five o’clock shadow, standing there in scuffed boots and yesterday’s shirt, smoking those little rollups. three planets roll in — tired eyes, soft hips, pushing strollers that look like busted moons dragging snot-nosed
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
the morning’s got its claws in me, a hangover squatting on my brain like a fat whore who won’t leave. there’s still a little whiskey going in the blood, warm and evil, sloshing around the empty tank of me, burning sweet. we talk the usual shit about love, life, and the happiness that fucked off
she stood there in those beat-up boots, laces knotted tight, shawl hanging off her shoulders the way a drunk hangs off a barstool — loose, tired, done. out ahead the lake lay frozen solid, a big grey nothing staring back, the closest thing to forgiveness she’d ever been offered. little flecks of ice drifted in
the pictures went in like a splinter you can’t dig out. one showed a Jewish boy, maybe ten, lost inside those striped rags, the yellow star sewn on like a tag on something being shipped. another was nothing but bones twisted wrong and black smoke crawling out of chimneys into a sky that didn’t give
did you just die there in the night? I can’t hear those wild wings anymore, that frantic beating gone silent like a jazz riff cut short in some dim basement club. you were drunk on pure panic, bashing your tiny skull against the cheap IKEA lamp I got last week, that blinding circle of false
she blew in after the lunch bells had faded, Sunday, round two in the afternoon, beautiful in that white-brown whirl, dancing and floating between the 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
it was Sunday, the early evening sliding down slow and gold over the rooftops, the whole suburb holding its breath like it already knew, and there I was in my small garden, listening to them, that couple going at each other, screams with no floor to them, rage coming up out of the throat the
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 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
she starts the day with a big pot of turmeric and aniseed tea, some half-arsed apology to the liver after the whiskey kicked the shit out of it all night. it steams up the cracked window while the rain does its usual piss-down outside. she keeps thinking about the mirror she saw advertised in the
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
it’s a bitch 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
I need something else, something other than the low-down hum of silence blowing through my wide-awake bedroom like the ghost of all the roads I never took, the heater dead, the night frozen stiff at six below. I’m lying here in this fever-cabin with the taste of my favourite Mexican place, Las Iguanas, still rolling
Maharaj and Co. General Suppliers, Established 1888. the floor, beat-to-shit planks of Canadian pine, scarred and grey as a coin worn smooth by too many hands, been there since the clippers came in heavy with tea from the east. sailors with arms like dock ropes drag crates, sweat cutting channels through the grime on their
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 through the shitty streetlight with a sign dangling off it — faulty, please
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
For Kari… 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,
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
