New Cross

New Cross smells like exhaust from busses that are double-length and are out of service for the night. New Cross is full of people standing on sidewalk cracks that are too tight and are forming puddles for it and who have glassy eyes from being in a new place under florescent light flats with cracking window paint and cracking mortar and cracks in the red post boxes, where their children wear plaid skirts in school and tights and perfect little black shoes and the government pays for it or something, and they wait in their skirts and their tights and their shoes outside the Off-License every day around 4:45, "Only 4 school children at a time, please!" to buy a extra-milk bar and talk to the boy who poked at their side on the playground behind my window where their giggles wake me up after I hit the big big snooze button five times, beacause my Studio is across the Street, Ben Pimlott, 5-16, and I can't always get the urge to hit the button for floor 3. and sign my name so they know Ive been working. New Cross always feels strange but/and always feels like home when I exit the station, on the bumpy rubber floor that hasn't been cleaned since the hail storm, where the man with the beard and the the saw-horse desk sells papers in the morning with his 20 p and 50 p and 1 pound and 2 pound coins stacked so high that the East London Line commuters might make them fall with their tall-black-boot stomps, and there will be a delay and everybody get out their "mobiles", and everybody start writing a "text" or two, until 'stand clear, the doors are closing, this is an East London Line Service to Whitechapel, stand clear of the doors, please' or 'wherever you go, whatever your mood, and whatever de weather, have a good day'. And the days begin and the days end and some people are up very early walking down the street, and some people don't know which way is up, and some people always seem to wear all black, and some people dont know where they are because they are always looking at the sidewalk and somepeople shop at Iceland every night before the robber bars go down to buy Kingsmeal white bread and Whole Milk for their babies upstairs and some people walk next to all of them and sometimes look right and sometimes left, and sometimes just straight ahead.