cheap ideas of the future
by uzwi
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“She stood companionably next to him for a moment, hands on hips, looking around the mostly empty space as if oil-stained floors and fluorescent warning stripes held an innate interest for her. Epstein didn’t like the way she relaxed. She was too hard to avoid. Her tailoring occupied the warehouse like another personality: everything interested it, from a momentary change in Epstein’s breathing to the sound of footsteps half a mile away. Every time its attention shifted, he caught the rank, exciting smell of hormonal gradients. She would smile at you behind that as if remembering something sexual you had enjoyed together, while pictographs ran chaos patterns down the inside of her forearm, from elbow to wrist like print from the historical times. She was some cheap cutter’s idea of the future.”
the m john harrison blog 
Gosh 🙂
Nice.
This reads like a parallel universe version of Lise in William Gibson’s “The Winter Market”, one of my all-time favorite SF short stories.
Hi Mike
Have been in London for work today. How you manage to write such positive and up-lifting stuff when living in such a place is beyond me.
Couldn’t find the Nuevo Swing unisex hairdesser in Southwark, but pretty sure the V Club Kids have de-camped from the moors to the tube system. London makes me feel old and irrelevant.
come to NYC
whiteonesugar (any relation to NATO-standard?);
Nuevo Swing used to be in the parade of shops in Jamaica Road, next to the fishing tackle shop which sold live meal worms in five different colours. It subsequently moved to Downtown Rotherhithe, near the Blacksmith’s Arms and is the only local emporium open on Pluterday, catering as it does to disgraced Hong Kong billionaires. Apparently it plans to emigrate. True, Southwark as a whole can be a tad bland but Bermondsey surely has everything the human heart desires.
whiteonesugar: it was making me feel old & irrelevant by the time I was 30. Should have taken the hint & stayed away.
I’m just a miserable bastard at heart. NYC, Southwark, Sheffield, if there are people around I’ll probably be moaning.
NATO standard ¦¦; looks around baffled ;¦¦ what?
This Bermondsey you speak of… Does it sell dandelion & burdock? Does it have cheap t shirts of old bands? If so I should try it next time.
I don’t know about Bermondsey but at the Hendon Air Museum cafe you can have dandelion & burdock and picalilli sandwiches.
NATOstandard: tea/coffee with milk and one sugar.
I’ll see your picalilli sandwich and raise you pie n’ mash from Manzi’s. Just so long as I don’t have to eat either.
The Clash used to practise in an old warehouse in Rotherhithe. But mostly it produced gangsters, artists and writers. It was a fun place.
Ah hah.
Where I’m sitting has produced murderers, obesity, ignorance and alienation. But the skies are perfect.
User name is a result of hanging around rugby bulletin boards.