Bill poster in action today

What would make a good caption for this - "Culture clash"?

Photo: bill poster man in hi-vis work clothes up tall ladder to replace the topmost of two large billboard posters. The bottom one is a poster advertising flats at Greenford Quay "West London's Vibrant Rental Community". The top one is half and half and it's hard to tell which poster is being added and which being covered over; one is for "First Hindi Entertainment on Samsung TV Plus"; the other appears to be a fashion advert for White Fox brand leisurewear.

Update:

The new poster completed (for First Hindi Entertainment Channel)

Short Story of the Month, December 2024

The trouble about helping strangers is you just never know what you're getting into and you don't know what other strangers there might be when you get into it. The clue is in the word "strangers". (Ed.)

T H E   M A N   O N   T H E   T R A I N 

by Sarah Turner

Copyright 2024 © by Sarah Turner. All rights reserved

I’d speculated about the man even before we spoke; he interested me as soon as I saw him on the station platform that afternoon, in his long tweed coat and beaten-down, once-formal shoes. He caught my eye and paced towards me with a focused look that made me think he was about to ask me something. I thought he might need help, and that I should do what I could for him. I was confident at that age, perhaps more so than I should have been, old enough for the adult world to have started to seem straightforward, and too young to have really understood the complication in it, and I assumed I could solve most of the problems other people had, but now that we were on the train and he was sitting across the aisle from me, with his legs crossed at the knee, exposing his thin, sockless ankles, I suspected that there hadn’t been a specific issue. He just seemed anxious. He was holding a small glass and he kept glancing over his shoulder and swinging his foot. His nervy manner, combined with an unusual expressiveness in his face, made me think he must be especially intelligent – a retired academic, perhaps, or a poet, and I watched from the corner of my eye as he glanced round, leant forward to pour a glass of wine from the bottle he’d hidden in his bag, and sat back to sip it.

Bonus book for the next Story of the Month

Cover: Day of the Flying Leaves

In addition to a copy of one of the New Short Stories anthologies, the next Story of the Month author will receive a copy of Day of the Flying Leaves, poetry by yours truly. I will also inscribe and sign an as-yet unpublished poem on a blank page. I hope this will not be a disincentive! (Ed.)

Short Story of the Month, November 2024

We've just arrived back to civilisation and found a great short story of the month for November. It's a "read twicer". Did anything happen while we were away? Ed.

I O U 

by Robert Stone

Copyright 2024 © by Robert Stone. All rights reserved

 

BILL HAD NOTICED, and he noticed it again now, that whenever Brett’s friends felt that they had to speak to him, they didn’t look him in the eyes, as though they might be afraid to do that, rather they looked in his direction, over his shoulder. Brett herself was not like that, not quite.

The canal at Ladbroke Grove, Tuesday

12:22 5 November 2024

Photo: Looking along a canal that bends away to the right in the distance from this viewpoint on a bridge, with a swan beside a houseboat barge on the right bank, on bright calm shiny water, with a variety of buildings alongside the left bank, foremost one completely covered in brightly coloured graffiti. (There is another swan following some distance back by the next houseboat. They both leave gentle V-shaped in their wake.)

Lime + Uber eBikes chaos – London

Kensal Green: 5 November 2024, 11:08 a.m.

Photo: “On Lime + Uber” branded eBikes piled up blocking the pavement outside Kensal Green underground station, 5 November 2024