CONCRETE_OLYMPUS_

There’s someone living in it - at the top - the room with the plastic red roses in the window, underneath the yawning hole in the roof where the slum pigeons nest - the lonely company of TV strobe in the dark. The hotel closed in 2011, although time had stopped in the hotel in the late 1980s. Breakfast was served in a David Lynch red room, a full English ordered the day before and served in reverse. This was a hotel of the old internet. Scrolling scrolls of information. Disappearing into the lost property bucket of capital S Search.  For us, it was the mystery across the road -  Cars under covers that evaporated in the morning - Floor plans showing networks of corridors left behind.  A building once occupied by an elite, fallen into three star hotel mediocracy and left for dead in the playground of casual property acquisition - bored by the resistance of municipal planning permission.  We want to get inside - to take photos of the fall from grace. But this is someo...

1. Skinny Puppy and buttery toast before school. Saturdays spent with Knut Hamsun eating buttons.  - But then Xtal in my brother’s halls of residence in a Georgian crescent. 2. Endroducing on an inherited floor mattress, diagonal CD lines and a carpet of ash. Funerals in borrowed shoes - This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven.  - But then Woman in the Ghetto on sweaty Thursday nights. 3. Spanish water, A garret with mice and a 2-part text launched from a thousand miles away.  - But then 8 in C Minor and a soft baby’s head in the dark red autumn.  4.  5am A40. Time Has Told Me and cold coach sleep. Folding out the sofa bed and an 11am beer. The Man Who Mistook his Wife. - But then 8 in C Minor, 2am milk hugs and a bed cave.  5. 2 metres. We went 2 ways. Digging rocks in the dark and sleeping head on the wolf grey carpet. - But then We’ve Got to Try and the three boys in open fields distancing from the rest of the world.  6.  Sombre Zoom c...

She was in this spot yesterday. We stood in yellow raincoats staring at the black water, rain and wind shelling its surface. Jackson Pollock white water spray. The engine was cut and the small boat creaked and bobbed. You’re looking for her coming up for air. Eyes darted between squalls - studying the surface of the sea - waiting for an Instagram story. But that whale held her breath. The yellow coats huddled together in soaked silence for hours. Couples, families, friends and then me - the guy looking like he needed the whale the most. I’d started driving a few days before, stopping in a Travellodge that had stopped even trying to be habitable. I dumped my stuff and drove a few miles to Gordale Beck to admire where cows had once been painted. The next day, I drove to the Lake District and crashed my car outside Lake Windamere to a Mogwai crescendo.  The other driver flew at me in a rage while his wife sat sadly in the passenger seat. They’d just come from the hospital. I let...

1. Pickles walked with a limp - gout I was told. He wore his hair in a pony tail even as his forehead migrated backwards. The 90s was his goldilocks moment of youth, irresponsibility and a little bit of cash. He sold me bags of pills outside Wetherspoons. Do you remember Spliffy and those jeans with the red panels on the back? Hair gel, Lynx and Reebok Classics. Nightclubs and bars with carpets. Mitsubishis and hash-for-cash. Italia 90 and £1 pints.  2. I watch the squirrels outside my window.  I’d reminisce if I could, but when I see photos, I can’t see myself in myself.  The key in the door is becoming stiffer.  Sometimes I forget to eat or choose not to. I can't set a table for one. I like the bus stop. Our first kiss was here.  3. We all want to walk into the sea. Something pulls us in. Flirty recoil of tide. We either stand at its edge and stare into it contemplating our first step, or we wade in. Fold your clothes and walk into the sea....

I think I nearly died on that mountain.  I woke at 4am, head on a backpack of pants, socks and a disposable camera, lying on a metal Stansted bench with a family of four sat politely by my feet. I’d arrived by the last evening train and spent the night.  A guy called Dom told Matt to ask for Francois at Turin airport. Francois was how we were going to get to France, but we’d never met him, couldn’t recognise him and didn’t know where he’d be. We waved down the first coach we saw outside the airport and as luck would have it Francois stepped off to shoo us out the way. He didn’t know who Dom was, but allowed us on the coach to sit with the anoraked middle-age skiers. We stepped onto gritted mountain pavement. Denim jacket and converse trainers. 21 years old with no forward thinking. I Looney Tuned to a cash machine across the ice and entered my pin code in vain, but my overdraft was maxed out. I had some cash in my pocket and spent it on fried potatoes in pitta bread. A Mi...