The Ten Bells, 2008
The Pub at The End Of The World
The Ten Bells has looked like a pub at the end of the world for a long time now. _______The paint on the wall outside – so far off-white that brown is a closer fit – peels and flakes away in huge patches __________ frozen in decay. The wooden frames look riddled with rot and the most respectable feature is the lantern above the doorway, which has seen better days and looks, by turns, quaint and menacing.
It is a fag-end of a place, populated by the trendy, shitty people that have coalesced around Whitechapel since trendy, shitty industries made their homes here ______ maybe around the time Ceasar landed.
This guy bounces in through the doorway. I can’t tell if he’s drunk or sick _______ his eyes are glassy when he looks at me. ___He’s like a child _____ He looks too young to be a tramp but it’s clear that he is, the grime on his face and clothes too ingrained to be anything other than authentic. He buckles to the floor because he can’t remember what legs are supposed to do and the barman’s on him in an instant, picking him up be his junk-shop neon hoodie and hauling him outside, into the shadow of the church over the road.
Fuck him: If his brain’s broken then he’s already been spared the shit the rest of us are putting up with; if he’s drunk then coming to in an alley beside the pub at the end of the world is the least of his problems.
© Matthew Sheret, 2008
