Collins awoke. Bad taste in the mouth. He could feel the pressure of the blue Olympic fence, that great pulsating occult sigil, weighing down on him and the value of his period Georgian terrace on Queensbridge Road. He needed to get up and out, back on the second-hand book trail. Brushing aside the crumbs of last night’s pizza he slithered from the sofa and stumbled into the kitchen. This was the epicentre, the place where ley-lines crossed, where thirty years previously he had sat there talking with his chums about what a jolly time they’d all had at university and wasn’t it great they’d found such a lovely property for such a knock-down price. Now Dalston was a facsimile of a palimpsest, a cardboard EastEnders set, stored in a lock-up somewhere north of the M25. Collins felt the phlegm rising. He needed to get out of the house, away from the stacked, yellowing copies of the LRB and mouldering memories. He stepped out of the front door and set off for Kingsland Road. The Waste, they used to call it. All Collins could see now was a Hackney Council-sponsored psychic wasteland of steel and glass yuppiedromes, Ballard’s sputum, spat eastwards from Shepperton all over everyone’s fucking faces. Ignoring the raucous black teenage girls, the bustling Turkish cafes, the drunks outside the Irish pub, the African mums and dads, the mobile phone salesmen, the greasy spoons, the newsagents, the market, the bikes in the bus lane and the buses, Collins was struck by how dead the place was. Dead. Snuffed it. Kaput. Killed by Blair. Gone the way of his timely property investment. “Got to be worth at least 2000 words in the Guardian Review,” Collins thought. “I’ll get on the phone to Jessica at the Wylie Agency – straight after I’ve popped up the road to Fresh and Wild”.
-’Psychogeographyteacher’
