A short story from our Londonia channel - silly, for a change, think we are currently witnessing enough dystopia, thank you! And within the story for fellow London fans, a large red chunk of nostalgia . . .
© Kate A Hardy 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYbPfD4ZcqE&t=130s
My current series of paintings are all based on sketches done from train windows on London train journeys. I've been using the timed sketch idea for some years but decided to restrict the journeys to London as it's my main inspiration place for current and future writing ideas. As well as journeys the sketches can be from a static place - café windows a favourite, or a brief standing/crouching sketch if I have been captivated on a walk by a particular cluster of buildings, trees, etc.
As I mentioned before on this blog, I stopped painting for some time as I felt disturbed at having to purchase plastic (acrylic) paint in plastic tubes, and buying wood specifically to then cover it in paint. Having now decided to only buy 'second hand' paint from online sites such as gumtree/Vinted et al, and only using found wood or old pictures bought in recycling emporiums, I feel this to be ok, or as near as ok as possible until I perhaps make a sortie into using earth pigments and fallen trees.
The picture below is an extraordinary example of 50s/60s factory paintings (I assume); where someone has been trained to dab and smear, creating a homogenised version of a landscape, in this case one I find extremely eerie. It cost four euro in the many-times-on-this-blog-mentioned Emmaus, so someone rid themselves of something rather worrying, Emmaus made a bit, and I get a large and cheap canvas to work on - with some unready interesting textures which will work well with my next sketch - that of Greenwich and the dome structure, the two minute's limitation making some interesting swoops and lines.
I hope the previous painter - or their ghost won't mind be borrowing the surface; I find it interesting to absorb someone's forgotten brushstrokes into a new image. Would they have had a cooling mug of tea on their work station as I will no doubt have? and similar worries, fantasies, music or blankness running through their mind as they had worked.
There have been many recorded on this blog, and here's one from this June. At the end of a round UK trip of a couple of weeks visiting lovely friends and family I rounded it off with a three night stop in my home city, and the best B and B I can honestly remember - an elegant semi in south London stuffed with art, lovely objects, incredible garden, and run by marvellous hosts.
I'm currently working on paintings based on sketches in London - mainly from train windows, and so now how have a good stock built up, mainly from around Greenwich, east London and Highgate - the areas I was doing most of my wanderings, as ever exploring and marvelling over how many undiscovered-by-me places this fascinating city holds even after living there for years, and all the trips since.
I've done many, many of these over the years; sometimes to do with a writing idea, or sketching but often just curiosity over how my native city changes constantly.
Usually I find a room at the once incredibly cheap, St Atan's, hotel in Bloomsbury but even that modest place has become unaffordable. This time I found a generously low-priced Air B and B room on the boarders of Islington and booked it immediately, partly as the owner said it could share the secret of how to make white Marmite.
Taking a place in North London - more my childhood area rather than Eastwards which has been the case for several years due to for writing scenarios - I was excited to find a whole vast area I had forgotten, or possibly never visited in any depth. Canonbury was as I had imagined - full of elegant Georgian houses, little gated parks and rows of boutiques, but I'd never heard of the New River Walkway, something I noted in the flat's very excellent 'off the beaten track' London guide books. What an oasis of calm and biodiversity within London's sprawl - willow trees and a wandering path following a man-made river originally fabricated to provide drinking water to the area.
I am one!
Londonia has been made into a paperback following its earlier appearance as a hardback.
These last few years have clearly shown that our taken-for-granted human-made political, monetary and life support structures exist on a knife edge; that the planet and its climate can no longer take the constant battering we have been giving it for decades, and that we have to figure out, and very rapidly, new systems, and accept that never-ending growth is not the future, rather, a humble acceptation of de-growth while there is still time...
Oof... Anyway, Londonia is certainly not all dark, a genre I would term Dyst-hopeia, dystopia with warmth heart, humour and hope.
The new paperback is available on Amazon, Blackwells or from Tartarus Press directly, as is the hardback and ebook format.
The follow-up book is at completion point and I am seeking new representation to carry forward the Londonia series.
Londonia's book jacket intro:
Londonia, that’s where we are. A sprawl of a place surrounding The Cincture - all of it once London town.
Some persons say we’re in the year 2073, others cycle 60 . . . who gives a creepin’ beetle where we are in the history of man. Fukked it up good and proper didn’t we – they, humankind generally.
All I know is I got my shed, my friends and a little bit of an angle on stuff – visions, see inside persons, y’know.
Anyway, ain’t about me so much this book, more about Hoxton and her life.
Within half a clockface I knew she was different . . . not so many damefolk would take over a church after waking on a bench with not so much as a gnat’s knowledge of what happened in their life before that moment. Got it sorted she has: a finder’s life for her – whatever you want: coffee, a shootstick, fresh meat, Zeitporn, snash, gnole . . . her ‘an Jarvis, they’ll find it – for a goodly trade, of course.
All sorted until a jaunt into The Cincture caused her to learn something that opened up a chink into the past; something that started the ultimate finding mission.
Anylane, I’m getting ahead of meself here. Pull up that armchair to the fire, turn this over and start reading. I’ll put the kettle on if the watermec’s been. Jake’s the name – Jake the prophet.
Strange, sitting in bed with the window open on a far-too-hot-for-May morning with a zillion birds tweeting, to recall a certain day way back in mid 80s London. I'm including these few paragraphs from an early novel, Going out in the Midday Sun, in my latest book as an illustration of the decade's excess when it came to food advertising budgets (and probably everything else); I imagine they are now somewhat less extravagant, or maybe not . . .
I'm meandering into non-fiction territory with the new book, at the moment entitled, Celebrating the Inconsequential inspired partly by a very long walk which I described a few posts back. We'll see where it goes. So far I'm enjoying a new literary departure very much, when I get a chance to write in between trying to keep our garden/bird and insect sanctuary alive in this alarming heat.
On a Monday in 1986, a stylist is late for an office furniture shoot.
Randy Fisher's photographic studio sat in a Kings Cross backstreet. The client and slimy Marvin, the art director, were due there at 9am. It was 9am.
Holly had the knowledge as well as any cabbie, but all the snarl-ups were well in place plus a few extras, including a lorry unloading toilets into a new loft complex in Leonard Street. The driver, attired in baggy shell suit, a fag drooping from his lips, wore an unhurried air as people leaned from their car windows yelling and gesticulating; the air was thick with honking and swearing.
Holly found her notebook and added a phrase to her anti-styling song, humming another slice of the tune. Calm: there was no point getting worked up. If she did, she would be lying in the back of the car under a blanket with a firework-display migraine by the end of the afternoon.
She arrived at the studio at 9.15 and climbed the iron staircase, nerves jangling. Randy's new assistant Marcus opened the door and mouthed: "Watch out, Marvin's already had three coffees." Randy was up a ladder fiddling with the large-format camera, the height revealing cowboy boots under too-tight white jeans The Eagles were on the sound system and the client was leafing through a book of models.
Marvin kissed Holly lecherously and lightly groped her backside. Coffee breath and stale cigarette smoke enveloped her: Marvin, the huge beaky bird of prey, shaking from his diet of fags and intravenous black coffee with five sugars drip.
"Hi darling, you're late . . . we'll have to spank you."
"Yes, sorry. Traffic." But he was already gone, sucking up to the client.
"Holly our Stylist — Roger Hillway from Streamline products."
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Did you find everything Holly?" said Marvin, looking even more beaky than usual.
"Yes – selection of smart office wear dresses, new Mac computer, phone, and . . . the donkey head."
"Good, good," said Marvin, rubbing his hands. "Well, we've chosen the model." A round of snorting laughter emanated from the three men. "She'll be here at 10.30, should be done by 12.00. While we're waiting for the lab to process the film, we thought we might all go out for lunch."
Charlene arrived, blonde and busty. The outfit was chosen, the props arranged, lights placed. No need for makeup as Charlene was to wear the donkey head.
"But you could have just used me," Holly was about to say, but realised Charlene and her breasts were the reason for lunch.
The courier came for the film, they all got in a taxi and were at the door of 'School Dinners' by 1pm.
Holly groaned internally at the sight of the restaurant. She had gone there once before with a crowd of advertising executives and had hoped never to return. They were shown downstairs into the cavernous space and presented with menus by a gazelle-like young woman dressed in blazer, stockings, suspenders and painfully high stilettos. The client and Marvin perused the wine list, occasionally stopping to mentally undress Charlene, while Randy flashed his new mobile phone: "Yeah, sure I can fit that in this week, what's the budget? Not bad . . . on the way to getting the Porsche, eh! See you on Thursday then — ciao."
Holly glanced around the room at the tables of overfed businessmen on expense accounts and wondered how the world had got into such a state. She requested the day's special after a brief glance at the menu and excused herself to have a few quiet moments in the loo away from Marvin, who had started to rub a foot up and down her leg.
The loo was already occupied with women checking their makeup. Holly made do with a perfunctory glance at herself in the reflective steel hand dryer: short blonde hair, disarrayed from the rushed start to the day, winter pale skin.
The large brown eyes stared back while her mind wandered: What are you doing here? Why did you spend four years doing an art degree then to work in this superficial world? —must phone mum — wonder what Sam is doing now . . . do I miss him? No, but . . . Her thoughts were interrupted by a blast of Robert Palmer singing 'Addicted To Love' as the door opened and two more women swayed in to the crowded room, one of them bumping into Holly. "Oops sorry . . . d'you think he's going to ask me out then?"
"Why wait — grab him! I would . . . if I wasn't already attached — here try this, it's new by Givenchy, Organza."
"Oooh, that's just what I need, an Organza . . ."
Holly left and weaved her way back around the crowded tables. "Oh, there you are — we were beginning to wonder what you were doing in there," grinned Marvin, nudging the client.
"Champagne all round," Randy announced to a waitress in a gymslip.
"Would you like a caning with it?" She produced a long thin cane and whipped it across her stocking encased thigh, thwack! Today's special is sausage and dumplings," she added, pouting, lips glossy red.
"Waahay!" shouted Marvin. "Yeah, bring it on!"
From a long way off, Holly saw herself sitting on the cliff edge near Durdle Door in Dorset — a warm breeze, nodding pink scabious, the cry of wheeling gulls. She had to get off this hamster wheel: wake, rush, buy crap for stupid ads, sit in traffic, home, sofa, crash, eat, sleep.
Randy’s elbow nudged her. "Top up? How's the sausage . . . phwoooaah!"
At last the bill came: three hundred and fifty quid, to be hidden in the final invoice.
Taxi back, film back, no re-shoot. Holly packed the props, slipped out from the studio and found a car-shaped space where the car had been.
Okay. Enough. I've sent out submissions to I don't know how many literary agents, crafted the letters, honed the synopsises, synopi? described my publishing history; been endlessly encouraged by friends and family but it seems what I wish to write doesn't appeal to agents; satirical glances at where we are now and what could happen in the, to my mind at least, tumultuous and dark future are not wanted. At least by unknown writers; fine if you are madame Atwood . . . absolutely no jealously here. ;0)
I'm putting aside the four manuscripts of this genre for now and temporarily ceasing Outcrier - another bleak but humorous slice of a possible future world, and doing something I said I wouldn't do - writing a novel to attempt to fit into a genre that could be more acceptable. But already it's escaped the genre I had started out with so, I'll keep going and see where it ends up. No mention of a rumbling, dark future, keeping it fairly light with a black humour edge.
Post-apocalyptic London is where my writing heart beats strongest (see novel link to the right) and I still have hope that the follow up to Londonia will get an airing, but for a while I'll try something else. Why not? It's an interesting experiment to step outside the box ones mind has constructed.
Extract from current book with working title: I first became aware of my intermittent unusualness after Dad drove the Cortina into chip shop window.
Eva, a fifty-something year old, self invented psychoanalyst sits in her garret flat somewhere in North London.
***
I sit at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug of herbal tea, radio 4 nattering in the background and the shadows of late summer leaves dappling the 1950s wallpaper I have somehow got used to.
When I first shown the garret by the fifteen-year old estate agent who pointed out its merit of convenient proximity to the tube but was stuck for much else to say I felt my life falling away, that it had come to this. But actually, what do we need above shelter, warmth, food, a few treasured possessions? A few more friends would be nice. I think I may be turning into a hermit-ess. Or a bloke to re-discover sex with? Or, a woman? My thoughts of what it would be like to caress someone else’s breasts are interrupted as the intercom rasps reminding me that I haven’t prepared for Geoff Brenton’s visit at all. I was probably avoiding it anyway.
I lift the handset, say hello, and his clipped voice answers. “Geoff here.”
Out on the landing I listen to his footsteps clumping on the bare wood stairs. He nods as he arrives, a slight beading of sweat on his forehead under a lock of hair that has escaped its greased companions.
“Good afternoon, Geoff.” I stand back, avoiding a handshake. “Did you find a parking space okay?”
He jerks his head towards the little window at the end of the landing. “Eventually, in Clark street. It’s getting worse, isn’t it.”
I don’t possess a car so take little notice of parking issues other than people’s complaining about it.
“Bus?”
He looks at me as if I have suggested crawling on hands and knees the distance from wherever he lives in Holloway. “The seats are disgusting on buses.”
We enter my lodgings and I wonder if he mentally disinfects everything as he steps over the threshold. Quite encouraging really; whatever I am doing must be of overwhelming use for him to put up with my surroundings.
“Would you like to sit on the sofa, or you can lie down if you prefer.”
I am not an actual psychoanalyst and I think many of them concur that the lying down thing is rather outdated but I offer it anyway.
“Can we sit at the table again?”
“Of course.”
We sit. I offer a drink. He declines. His eyes roam around the room for a while. “You know, my parents had the same wallpaper. I’m sure of it.”
“Oh?”
“In the spare room.” He drags out the last two words as if he fears them.
I decide this is interesting. “Was it an overflow room for possessions, or a guest room?”
“. . . They called it the naughty room. Me or Gill would be put in there if we’d been bad.”
“For a short while – just to make you reflect for a few minutes?”
“Hours. Sometimes a day, or a night. I’d have to pee out of the window. Once I crapped in a mug as I didn’t know what else to do, and I wiped my arse on a sock.”
The bus seats and other phobias begin to take shape a little. In the first and second sessions Geoff had only skirted around what I had suspected were deeper issues. We’re well away from topsoil this time.
“Did that result in more punishment?”
He drums three fingers on the table top before inspecting them and wiping away on a neatly folded square of kitchen roll whatever microbes he fears will be present.
“I thought Father was going to kill me. Gill and Mother were both screaming at him to stop.” He smiles suddenly as if a switch has been flipped somewhere within him. “I took flowers to the woman I was telling you about.”
Startled by this sudden change of direction I dredge back last week; Geoff sitting opposite me, his face slightly flushed as he described somebody in the accounting department.
“Did she appreciate the gesture?” I ask.
“She was a bit shocked, I think. In a good way – it must have been as she agreed to dinner on Friday evening.”
“Were you surprised?”
“I was. Very. Usually when I have done this before they say no.”
“Usually? On our last meeting, you said you’ve rarely attempted to ask anyone out.”
“Did I? He pauses as if rummaging through a mental filing cabinet. No . . . I’ve asked many people.”
“Tens, twenties?”
“Hundreds, possibly.”
“And she’s the first who’s agreed.”
“Correct.”
“How are you feeling about Friday?”
He sits back in the chair and reveals his horsey teeth in a rather maniacal grin. “Bloody terrified. That’s why I asked if you could fit me in rather than next week.”
“Would you like to tell me what it is you are mostly worried about.”
“What to say to her, mainly. And about what might happen . . . later on.”
“You mean after the restaurant.”
“Yes.”
“There might not necessarily be a later on.”
His expression droops a little into disappointment. “There always is in the films.”
I search for a film with which I can illustrate my point but James Bond keeps bobbing to the surface of my thoughts: cocktails, swooning women, tumbling hair. Shit. There must be hundreds of intelligent examples.
“Certainly, not always, Geoff. Let’s return to conversation you might have. Do you know much about her?”
“She drives a Ford Fiesta. It’s very clean.”
“. . . Good. You’ve spoken to her several times, I imagine.”
“Only twice. Once when her desk had been moved nearer the photocopier. Malcolm – my line manager had asked me to run off a copy of a contract. I asked her if the view was better from that side of the room, and she thought that was quite funny. And the second time was in the canteen when I spilt milk on her shoe – she was standing behind me and I lost control of my tray. Lucky I’d only picked up a milk jug and not a teapot at that point! Anyway, I quickly got a napkin crouched down and wiped away the milk from her shoe. It was while I was looking at her ankle that I thought I should ask her out.”
“Why then?”
“She has very nice ankles. And her shoes were extremely polished – high-heeled red shoes.”
“How do you find the rest of her?”
“Not bad. Not bad at all . . . good figure. It’s just her face . . .”
“Her face?”
“Rather rounder than I like, and she has very thick glasses.”
I regard the man before me and wonder what people are likely to say about his face which is unhealthy looking with a large flaccid nose and eyes that sit closely on either side of it.
“Can I ask you about your previous relationships, Geoff?”
In the first session Geoff had hardly talked until suddenly zipping into a monologue about his father’s new Mercedes; the second more about work issues and his worries over a bullish colleague.
He loosens his tie a little. I wonder how old he is. Late thirties? Have I asked him? I’d lost the notes I’d taken after his last visit. Bad. I’ll go straight out afterwards and buy a proper book, or perhaps I should start using the laptop – however it seems to be on the way out . . . He’s still forming words, or not. It’s difficult to say. Some people reveal all within their expressions, and others, like Geoff, could be thinking about anything from dry cleaning to mass murder.
“. . . There have been three.”
“Relationships.”
“In a way.”
“Very short ones?”
“Yes. I think you might call the first one . . . seduction, by a friend of my mothers. The second was a date set up by a friend of mine in the light aircraft association that I belong to.”
“You fly?”
“No. Not really. I tried but I suffer from vertigo. The woman, Sammy, wanted to go on a hike rather than a dinner date. I think I’m more of a wanderer so she was striding ahead all the time then waiting for me to catch up. In fact, she left me at a stile and I had to catch a lift back to the carpark in a cow truck.”
“I see. And the third?”
“Internet date. But she lives in Alaska and she told me yesterday that she’s marrying another woman. It’s annoying as we’d been talking for months and I really thought she would move over here.”
“So, you’ve had one actual physical encounter with a woman.”
“Yes.” The yes is as dry as someone responding to a survey on traffic calming. I wonder whether to move back onto the subject of the woman with nice ankles, but perhaps it might be useful to find out what the seduction involved, mainly for her sake.
“When you say seduction . . . did you have full sex?”
“I think so, but it was all over so quickly and she kept shouting at me to slap her.”
“You didn’t really enjoy it, I imagine.”
“It was . . . sort of exciting. I wanted to do it again with her but she didn’t respond to my calls. And then I found out from Mother that she had moved out of London.” He looks down at the table and frowns at a circle left from a coffee cup. “You’ll have to sand that out, you know.”
I glance at the kitchen clock and realise most of his session has expired and we haven’t ventured far into the Friday night issue.
“Where are you taking her for dinner?”
“A new Italian place on the high street. I thought it might bring up the subject of travel.”
“You’ve been to Italy then.”
“No.”
“Where have you travelled?”
“I went to the Isle of Man once for a bike show. I didn’t like the ferry much though.”
“Well, it’s a good idea anyway. You can ask her where she’s been, where she might like to go . . .”
He nods slowly, eyes focusing on the wall behind me. “What do you think I should say after dessert?”
“Would you like a coffee?”
“And after that?”
“Well, by then you hopefully will have an idea as to whether you might wish to see each other again. You could talk about that – for example, I was wondering if you’ve seen that new film with Leonardo de Caprio in it . . .”
“Which film?”
“I was just using that as an illustration.”
“I don’t rate him as an actor.”
I risk a quick look at the clock again. Ten minutes to go. I’ll go out somewhere – walk amongst trees.
“If you are asking me about inviting her back to your place, I’d say be very careful not to suggest anything too sudden.”
“Do you think she might slap me?”
“Probably not but she might just feel things were moving too fast. On the other hand, she might also be interested in something more than just dinner out. Only you will be able to judge that at that point.”
“There’s another issue.”
“Oh?”
“My mother always was on at me to eat with my mouth shut.”
“Well, that certainly is very important on a date. Do you eat with your mouth open still?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I forget, you see.”
“Maybe you could set up a system – such as, when you observe your fork rising towards your mouth, think shut.”
“But then I might do just that and the spaghetti would go everywhere else.”
The long hand has thankfully dragged itself to the top of the clock. I wind up the session.
“That’s true but maybe think of some other way for yourself. My brother shares the same problem and it’s difficult to share a meal without focusing on his mouth and its contents.” I gesture to the clock. “Okay. We’d better finish as I have someone else arriving shortly.”
He nods, reaches for his wallet and draws out the agreed notes. “Could I make another appointment?”
I reach for my diary and leaf through to the following week. “. . . I can do the same time if you like.”
“That works. Hopefully, I’ll have something to discuss about my date.”
He stands up and smooths the creases in his shiny grey jacket. His hands tremble very slightly. I walk to the door and hold it open for him. He holds out a hand and without thinking I take it. A second later I freeze waiting for some onslaught of images but nothing transpires. I’m just aware of his dry skin. Odd, I thought he might have had sweating palms.
The brain, as I have written many times on this blog, is the most extraordinary thing. As I sit here writing, I have a track by Unknown Mortal Orchestra playing in my head complete with the detailed bass line, his distinctive voice, crispy drum rolls and various guitar riffs that make up that song. It's not even one of my favourites but it turned up on my Spotify play list while driving yesterday and it's now well embedded, pushing out slightly the Detectorists theme tune which had taken up residence for several days. Actually the latter can stay; it's a beautiful song and I don't seem to tire of it, unlike Money Money Money which became a seriously unwanted lodger some years back due to Ezra having to learn it in his crap music lessons.
Anyway, all that to underline how amazing the brain is, and my blog post was to talk/ramble on about the more visual aspects of memory, with regard to places on this maligned planet. I was on a dog walk yesterday with new friend, author Adrian Mathews and we were discussing our respective nostalgias for London, realising that we both held the fondest memories from the 70s version of London with all the stuff that went along with it - Routemaster buses, formica cafés, few chain shops, and many wonderful old landmarks now sadly crushed under a new sedimentary layer of London's history. Mind, if the current novel I'm writing has any truth in its wayward madness, London is still there both in our collective minds, in time, and in all its phases.
During this morning's walk, I considered the places that have meant much to me, or not even much but have just stayed prominent in colour, shape, sound and smell within my memories over the years. An assortment:
Too many in London to state, but perhaps the ponds of Hampstead Heath, the small parks of Bloomsbury and the roads around St Leonard's church in Hackney where I have done so much wandering during Londonia research.
Gower St at 5:am on one of my 'deep topography' wanderings
A particular rounded hill in Dorest called Wingreen. It has featured in many of my books, and it was just visible from the end of our road when we lived in Wimborne, its wedge of beech trees strangely comforting to me; a memory of many happy walks with Mum listening to the larks and scanning the distant landscape for a glimpse of our road back home.
An elegant alley of oak trees also near Wimborne in an area called Pamphill, a short walk through which brings one to a perfect little brick pub named the Vine inn/ Probably my favourite pub ever, despite its restricted menu of cheese or ham sandwiches - or that's what was on offer last time. But actually, what could be better than a hearty cheese and pickle sandwich on white spongy bread and half a pint of something with a name like Rector's Leg, or similar.
Canford Cliffs near Bournemouth: ah, the views of Old Harry rocks and the rolling grasslands of the Purbeck area; the sand, the sea and all the memories of arriving there late on a summer day when everyone else was going to their guest houses or homes; wading into a placid sea, lying back and staring up the the clouds.
More recently, many personal postcard views of Cerbère close to the Spanish border. Two in particular - on walking into the hinterland and looking back at the sea and the train lines while a mass of bees explored the almond blossom, and swimming late at night in the town's small harbour.
And of Limoux, where we have just moved from. So many memories and mainly of places reached on favourite dog walks. Probably the one would be the point we always stopped on the 'runny fields' walk (where our greyhounds could run easily) and gazed over the vine-striped hillsides and steep hillsides above Alet les Bains.
The hills above our old house, an everyday and much loved, dog walk.
So, what poignant memories will be formed in this new-to-us area of France? Certainly the Loire itself - I must have stood for twenty minutes the other day just watching the water in the late afternoon sun. I can feel affection already for many sights and sounds here: the pale stone and slate buildings with their elegant details, the slightly fen-like distant views of tree-clumps and hedges, meadows and regimented striped fields, the late-summer swallows that still swoop and dip and the graceful herons traversing the skies as silent as gliders.
