| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | ||
Copyright Seeing it First Hand 2026 | Theme by ThemeinProgress
Written by jackbrewis
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 […]
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,
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 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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.
