the taste of human flesh

Cities are nothing without people. Actually, cities without people are fantastic post-apocalypse/zombie film sets. I suppose it is the people who make the cities and who require their expansion and development and the increasing urbanisation of the surrounding areas and so on. People and the cars in which they crawl hither and thither are possibly the taste of a city I was attempting to stop attempting to think of the other day to go with the texture of the fabric of the city itself. They have a sort of texture, anyway... a wiggly, erratic form to dodge and dart through if they're on the pavement in front of you; a rough, jaggy feeling when they're talking too loudly on a mobile next to your ear; a slightly sticky and unpleasant texture when they're staggering along the road too drunk to walk; a feeling like the constant and unrelenting slap of a wet flannel in the face when it's a pair of wifeys barking at each other in their special fag-assisted croakyvoices about the exciting happenings of a popular television drama or the price of morning rolls at a bus stop.

A few years ago I had the misfortune to have to negociate the pavements between St. Pancras and the nearby Thameslink station in London when visiting my sister. We hit it at about eight in the morning. Too many people and far far far too many cars. I was hoping to find something as busy as that but everywhere seemed slightly tame today. This bunch lurking in the Treegonk-light on the corner near the Centre of St. James will do.