"Run" • Snow Patrol (by Lee Hamblin)

Weaving through the Brixton traffic on an ice-blue Trek back then, you’d have reckoned him a deliverer of food or weed, either that or a bag-snatcher. Everyone began seeing the world through street-smart eyes those days, as everybody has had to ever since. 

He’d bought the ice-blue Trek when Armstrong won another tour. Heroes for him were super hard to come by, and he held on to Lance’s denials, not believing the rumours until he watched the confession years later. 

He stops at the lights, corner of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road. Rain, soft as a first verse shimmers on the tarmac. Another cyclist brakes hard, swerves, passes him ignoring the red, calls him a fucker and nearly gets taken out by a 68; but this cyclist’s got BMX skills learnt the hard way, gives the bus driver the finger without looking back.

In the hard-boarded-up windows of the café where a piss-weak cappuccino and one of yesterday’s croissant cost a pound, stapled flyers for banging club-nights or anti-austerity demos flap in the wind. In the doorway neatly folded plaid blankets and flattened cardboard boxes, a Tesco carrier bag of someone’s earthly belongings. Stood outside his shop, the grocer next door zips up his windbreaker tucking in his long white beard, rubs his hands warm, looks up to a sky darkening by the minute and threatening much more than a shower. 

The lights change. He turns into Atlantic Road. Above, a train on the overground railway squeals as it heads into town. Below, the railway arches house greengrocers, pound shops, phone fixers, a barber. 

For him, it’s been a crappy day, a crappy week, a crappy year, and all he wants to do is get home to his one-bed, smoke a joint, listen to Snow Patrol. He’s thinking this when an off-white Beamer in front slams on his brakes, comes to a stop outside the barber’s. A girl and a guy from the back get out, her camel-coloured skirt and top mirror her soft-curled, long hair. She’s holding a muti-coloured bouquet. The guy’s super slick too, suited in navy, booted in black. A sea of eyes appear at the window, all of them smiling and cheering, clapping congratulations. He can’t help but smile too.   

Lee Hamblin lives in Volos, Greece, where he teaches yoga. His stories appear in Flashback Fiction, Atlas and Alice, Fictive Dream, MoonPark review and others. You can connect with him on Bluesky @hamblin1.bsky.social