Meyer.jennya

A credit card is simultaneously useful and dangerous. On the one hand, opening a credit card—essentially carrying a high-interest loan in your pocket—helps to build your credit history, which will come in handy if you ever want to borrow money (to buy a house or a car, for example). And credit cards offer fraud protections you don’t get when using cash or debit cards—with the added bonus of giving you the flexibility to deal with financial emergencies.

All those benefits explain why 82% of adults in the U.S. (and 67% of folks age 18-29) have at least one card—but also explains why Americans owe more than a whopping $1 trillion on those cards collectively (credit card interest can be a real bear to deal with). That makes applying for your first credit card a pretty big decision, because you want the benefits of a credit card while avoiding as many of the downsides as possible, but you’re also dealing with a pretty skimpy credit history, which can limit your options.

Limit expectations

First and foremost, accept the fact that unless your parents started building your credit history when you were a child, you’re probably not going to get a high limit on your first credit card. The average first-time credit limit typically ranges from hundreds of dollars to the low thousands, so you’re not going to be financing any huge purchases or lavish trips with your first card (which Future You will be very happy for, trust me).

You should think of your first credit card not so much as a source of money but as a tool to establish and build your credit history, especially if you don’t have a credit score yet. If you don’t have a credit history (or have a poor one), you might need to consider a secured credit card. A secured card requires you to make a deposit that then becomes your credit limit—you’re basically borrowing your own money. For example, if you deposit $500 to open a secure card, your credit limit will be $500. Since you’re putting down the deposit, the risk to the bank is very low, enabling you to get a credit card despite credit history or score challenges. Secured credit cards are used to establish or improve your credit so you can eventually move on to a more traditional card.

Research first

Before you sign up for anything, do your research. Pull your credit reports—there are three major credit reports (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax), and you should get them all (they’re free)—and see what’s there. If you’ve never had a credit card or loan before, there might not be anything there, and you might not even have a credit score yet. That’s fine! Use these reports to make sure you’re not the victim of identity theft and that there’s no incorrect, negative information there that might affect your ability to get a credit card in the first place. If there is, take the steps to correct it.

Once you’ve checked on that, the next step is to research the credit cards you can qualify for. It’s crucial that you don’t just apply to a bunch to see what happens—too many inquiries against your credit can hurt your chances right out of the gate. Instead, research first. Experian offers a service that collects your personal information and then compiles a personalized list of credit card offers, which could be a good starting point. But you can also just go to card web sites to look at the Schumer Box.

What’s a Schumer Box? Named after Senator Chuck Schumer, it’s an easy-to-read breakdown of a credit card’s terms, including the annual percentage rate (APR), the billing cycle, annual fees, and fees for other transactions like cash advances. Schumer Boxes are prominently displayed on credit card statements, but you might need to dig around a bit if you’re researching.

Considerations

So what are you looking for in a first credit card? Here are the key things to consider while you’re researching:

• Avoid annual fees. Some credit cards charge an annual fee. Sometimes this is worth it if you get a lot of useful perks and benefits in exchange, but if you’re just starting out with credit cards it’s going to be difficult to judge that. It’s best to stick to cards that don’t charge a fee unless you are absolutely certain you’ll get your money’s worth.

• Look for low interest. The average APR charged by credit cards is currently close to 25%. Generally speaking, if this is your first card and you have little or no credit history you’ll likely be stuck at the higher end of that average, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a bargain. Even if you don’t intend to carry a balance on your card, getting the lowest possible APR can save you money if you have an emergency charge you can’t pay off right away.

  But don’t just look at the big bold APR number—it might be an “introductory APR” that only lasts for a short time. Dig into that Schumer Box or other documentation and make sure your APR isn’t jumping up dramatically after a few months or a year. Otherwise you might be in for a nasty shock.

• Check rewards. Many credit cards offer various rewards and benefits to entice people to sign up. Look for cards that offer rewards that are meaningful to you. If you love to travel, a card that offers airline points or other travel-related perks might be a better choice for you than a card that offers cash back on purchases. If you’d rather have the cash-back option, check to see how much you get for the stuff you buy routinely and look for a card that offers the best deal on your actual shopping habits.

• Ensure acceptance. A credit card is just a lump of plastic if merchants won’t accept it, so make sure your first card will work where you need it to. The safe choices are Visa and Mastercard-backed cards, because they are accepted more or less everywhere on the planet. Other cards, like American Express or Discover, are widely accepted in the U.S. (both claim 99% acceptance rates), but not so much around the world. If travel is in your future, stick with the safe choice.

A NEW study has revealed that ‘mate’ is often used as verbal camouflage by people who think the person they are addressing is a twat or worse.

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Stylist has teamed up with The Cake & Bake Show to offer one lucky reader the chance to win four tickets to see the show of their choice, at either the ExCeL in London or EventCity in Manchester. Plus get your hands on a brand new KitchenAid MINI Stand Mixer, which is smaller and lighter than its larger role model, and is ideal for bakers challenged with limited space and ‘smaller batch’ lifestyles. What is the name of the current GBBO Champion who will be at The Cake & Bake Shows this year? ANSWER: Nadiya Hussain This year's Great British Bake Off is well underway and what better way to celebrate all things cake than by viewing the likes of Nadiya Hussain ---------------------------------------- Completion message: Thank you for entering this competition We'll contact you if you're the winner. =================================

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DEATH has been told it is not allowed to take Sir Terry Pratchett until an investigation is held.

ENGLAND players have hit back at their critics insisting they are simply not very good at football.

Charlie Chaplin was woken up on the morning 17 September 1921 while in his bed at the Ritz Hotel on Piccadilly. “Visitors from Hoxton” he was told, and from outside the window he could hear children singing a song over and over again:

When the moon shines bright on Charlie Chaplin

His boots are cracking, for want of blacking

And his little baggy trousers need mending

Before we send him to the Dardanelles

The song had originally been written in protest about Chaplin not enlisting during WW1 (it was said that he had tried, but at 5 feet 4 inches tall and not much more than 126 pounds was told he was too small) but by 1921 the song had lost its original connotation or at least it had to the group of children from Hoxton School that had walked across London to see him.

Chaplin had arrived in England from America only a week earlier, disembarking at Southampton after a pleasant and sunny voyage. He had sailed across the Atlantic on the RMS Olympic, the elder sister ship of the Titanic but now, of course, complete with the requisite number of lifeboats and luxuriously re-fitted after life as a troopship during WW1. The comedian had come back to England mainly to promote his new and first full-length (six-reeler) film called ‘The Kid’. Already a huge success in America it eventually became the second highest grossing film of 1921.

The Manchester Guardian, in rather a gushing style – although not that dissimilar to most other newspapers describing the event – wrote of the first glimpse of the homecoming Hollywood star:

Mr Chaplin just bubbled over with good nature and good humour. He poured out smiles and laughter and merry jokes in bumper measure, and all with the utmost simplicity and perfect freedom from affectation.

The Mayor of Southampton greeted Chaplin and began speaking rather nervously, with an apology about the weather, “It does not always rain in England…” Chaplin quickly interrupted, “I am an Englishman, Mr Mayor,” he said, “and English weather, whatever it is, is good to see. It was raining, I remember, when I went away nine years ago.

Chaplin was now an incredibly rich man but his childhood in Walworth had been a desperately poor one. Both his parents, Charles and Hannah Chaplin, were music hall performers but of no great fame. When Charlie was just three, Charles Snr left the family home after his wife gave birth to a boy whose father was Leo Dryden – another music hall performer. Not long after the birth Dryden came and forcibly took his child, Charlie’s half-brother, away from Hannah.

Struggling financially, Hannah Chaplin had a breakdown in 1895 and the following year, along with Charlie and his brother Sydney, entered the Lambeth Workhouse. Although within a few weeks, however, the two boys were sent to Hanwell School for Orphans and Destitute Children.

In 1903, after further breakdowns, Hannah was placed in the Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum in Surrey. Chaplin later wrote about a visit to see her in 1912, just before he left to live in America:

It was a depressing day, for she was not well. She had just got over an obstreperous phase of singing hymns, and had been confined to a padded room. The nurse had warned us of this beforehand. Sydney saw her, but I had not the courage, so I waited. He came back upset, and said that she had been given shock treatment of icy cold showers and that her face was quite blue. That made us decide to put her into a private institution – we could afford it now.

The brothers took their mother from Cane Hill and placed her at Peckham House – a private asylum in south London that cost 30 shillings a week. Not an inconsiderable sum in 1912.

Chaplin had been performing to audiences from the age of five – it was said that he was literally pushed on to a stage when an audience started jeering after his mother when she suddenly lost her voice half way through a song. By the age of 19 he had become a member of Fred Karno’s prestigious music hall troupe, and it was with them that he first took him to America in 1910 (one of the other members of Karno’s company was Stanley Jefferson who would later become known as Stan Laurel). On a second visit in 1912 Chaplin caught the eye of Mack Sennett and he began to work in the still very young film business. Within a few years he had appeared in more than sixty films, most of which he had directed himself. By 1918 Charlie Chaplin was one of the most famous men on the planet.

When Chaplin stepped off the train onto platform 14 at Waterloo Station, just a mile or so away from where he had grown up as a child, he was visibly shocked at the thousands and thousands of people waiting ready to greet him. “A fierce roar of the great crowd smote his ears,” wrote one newspaper, while the Times wrote, “At Waterloo the stage might have been set for the homecoming of Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Lord Haig rolled into one.”

The police managed to get Chaplin into a waiting car which then drove down to the Ritz on Piccadilly. Another enormous crowd was waiting and ‘Everybody – including the police – went mad,’ reported the Manchester Guardian. Chaplin, his hair dishevelled, but bronzed by his voyage and dressed immaculately in a grey overcoat stood up in the car and shouted:

Thank you, very much, for this generous, kind and affectionate welcome. This is a great moment for me. I cannot say much. Words are absolutely inadequate.

The police were almost overpowered by the boisterous and excited crowd and there was a struggle on the steps of the hotel before they managed to get Chaplin inside. The crowd continued cheering until he appeared at a first-floor window where be broke up a huge bunch of carnations and threw them down to the crowd. A few days later he received a letter (one of thousands, many of them begging), “My boy,” it read, “tried to get one of your carnations and his hat was smashed. I enclose you a bill of 7s. 6d. for a new one.”

Chaplin told the press that he was tired and needed to rest but actually soon slipped out of the Arlington entrance of he hotel and took a taxi to Waterloo Bridge and then, on his own, he walked to Lambeth Walk an old haunt of his childhood. A few days later, on another trip to south London, he visited 3 Pownall Terrace in Kennington (the street would be demolished in 1968) where he had lived in a little room at the top of the house.

It was now occupied by a Mrs Reynolds, ”many’s the time I’ve banged my head on that sloping ceiling,” he said to her after she had taken him to see his old room. Mr Charles Robinson, described as Chaplin’s manager by the Daily Mirror, told the newspaper in an interview in 1921, that the attic scenes in The Kid were based on a replica of that room in Charlie’s old ‘diggings’ in Kennington.

 

Back at the Ritz, on the morning of the 17th of September, Chaplin got dressed and walked into the sitting room of his suite to meet the young visitors from Hoxton. He found fifty excited boys and girls from the Hoxton school. One boy, called Charles Loughton, stepped forward and handed him a box of cigars and a letter. It read:

You were one of us. You are now famous over the world. But we like to think you were once a poor boy in London as we are. You are now a gentleman, and all gentlemen smoke cigars. So we have chosen a box as a little gift to ‘Our Charlie.’

A young girl, Lettie Westbrook aged thirteen, gave Charlie a bouquet with a note saying, “with our thanks for all the fun you give to us.”

After Chaplin had given each child a package of “candy,” he impersonated an old man in a picture gallery. By a skilful use of his overcoat, hat, and stick, he appeared to grow gradually to a height of some nine feet in order to look at the highest pictures, and the children screamed with laughter.

Three weeks after Chaplin met the boys and girls from Hoxton School he left London, via Waterloo again, for New York, this time on the Cunard liner Berengaria. He had also decided, along with his brother Sydney, to bring his mother back with him to California. After a particularly harsh and tragic life much of which had been spent in workhouses and mental institutions Hannah Chaplin was being properly looked after in a home in Los Angeles.

During the production of ‘The Kid’ Chaplin had met a 12 year old girl called Lita Grey who appeared as the flirtatious angel in the dream sequence at the end of the film. Three years later he cast her again, this time as the female lead, in ‘The Gold Rush’. During the early stages of the production the 35 year old Chaplin became ‘romantically’ involved despite Lita being only 15. It wasn’t long before Lita discovered she was pregnant and was quickly replaced in the film by another of Chaplin’s lovers Georgia Hale.

Grey and Chaplin were wed on November 25th 1924 in Empalme, Mexico. The New York Times, reporting on the event, listed her age as 17. They had two children, Charles Jnr born in 1925 and Sydney born the following year. On August 27th they were divorced due to ‘extreme cruelty’. Chaplin was ordered to pay $600,000 and $100,000 in trust for each child – the world’s largest divorce settlement at the time.

Exactly a year after the divorce Chaplin’s mother, the woman whose life he had based so many of his female characters, and who had probably been suffering from the symptoms of Syphilis for over twenty years, died at the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Hospital in Glendale in August 1928.

 

British Pathe has now uploaded its entire collection of old films to the web. The 85,000 short pieces include many news reels and tourism videos set in the capital.

Ride around in 1960′s West End traffic for 20 minutes, see what a 1930′s fog looked like (hint: foggy), or check out some vintage sexism as 18-year-old Candy Scott poses on a massive gun.

And then there’s this:

View and share videos from this immense collection on the British Pathe YouTube channel.

On Saturday 8 March, on international Women’s Day, 100 female graffiti artists joined forces for the Femme Fierce Leake Street All Girl Takeover in aid of Breast Cancer Care. They painted the length of the Leake Street tunnel in Waterloo, breaking the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest spray paint mural by a team in the process.

See the artists at work and find out more in this video: 

Photos by Andrew Smith AKA McTumshie. View more over at his Flickr.

You can donate to the cause on the Leake Street Takeover JustGiving page.

The team at Domestic Sluttery get very excited about independent fashion brands, especially the ones on our own shores. We've uncovered loads of them over the years so here's a brilliant list of them, in dress form. If it's one thing these indie clothing brands excel at, it's an excellent dress. Basically, we've compiled your perfect shopping list. Louche are always going to be top of our

Londoners will by now be familiar with the Crossrail works scattered around the city, but probably less so with the artefacts uncovered during excavation. Now’s our chance to change that.

Crossrail’s Portals to the Past exhibition will display more than 50 archaeological finds, from a Roman cremation pot (which contained remains when discovered) to 16th century jewellery. It’s on at the Crossrail Visitor Information Centre between 15 February and 15 March.Visitors will also get the chance to see Roman skulls found buried in one of London’s lost rivers and find out more about the capital’s greatest Victorian shipbuilding yard.

Crossrail’s archaeologists will give a lecture at 6pm each Wednesday evening:

19 February — The Urban Realm — Buildings archaeology by Julian Munby from Oxford Archaeology.

26 February — Crisis and The Black Death by Sam Pfizenmaier from Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).

5 March — Beyond the City Walls, Recent finds from Liverpool Street Station by Alison Telfer, MOLA.

12 March — London’s Last Great Shipbuilder – The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company by Danny Harrison, MOLA.

Portals to the Past is free, and will be held at the Crossrail Visitor Information Centre behind Centre Point at 6-18 St Giles High Street, WC2H 8LN. It opens to the public on Tuesday to Saturday from 11am, no booking is necessary but if you want to attend the lectures, get there early as numbers are restricted to 50 per talk.

See also:

• Crossrail Dig Uncovers Bedlam Burial Site
• 14th Century Plague Pit Found During Crossrail Dig

Picture from Crossrail website.

A while ago, Us vs Th3m published a much-shared alternative tube map showing abandoned (or ‘ghost’) stations on the London Underground, put together by Dylan Maryk. Our resident transport geek and Tube Challenge record holder Geoff Marshall was working on something similar, and has now put together a simpler version that corrects a few errors and adds on surface buildings that you can still see, like the former Hyde Park Corner entrance. See the key in the bottom-right corner for more details.

Although treading similar ground to that previous map, we thought it was good enough to be worth sharing here. (It’s also drawn from scratch, to avoid potential breach-of-copyright problems.)

With assistance from Ben Pedroche, author of Do Not Alight Here.

See our full list of alternative tube maps.

Anyone doing Dry January will tell you that staying sober while socialising is the hardest part.

You might start the month with the willpower of a saint but, after spending a couple of nights drinking Coca Cola, you soon find yourself dreaming you’re being seduced by a talking pint of stout.

It’s surprisingly difficult to plan a night out without writing alcohol into the equation. For instance, there aren’t any bowling alleys in London without bars, which is baffling. Places that might have been a chaste date venue for teenagers in the 1950s are now just another place for Londoners to neck vodka milkshakes.

If during this long dry month you’re dating or meeting up with a friend, this list offers a selection of alcohol-free venues and ideas. There’s no way we can be comprehensive, though, so please add to the list by leaving your tips in the comments section.

Head for a coffee shop, or a ‘dry’ bar

Redemption (Trellick Tower, Weds-Sun) is London’s only dry pub, and gets great reviews. Mocktails are £3, and it does food.

Dating in destination coffee shops is the most straightforward way to avoid the pub. Brick Lane Coffee, for example, is open til 8pm on weeknights, as is Sacred Café on Ganton Street. None of the aforementioned sell booze. The Café at Foyles on Charing Cross Road is open until 8.30pm and only serves alcohol with food. If you’re not sniffy about chains, Caffé Nero on Frith Street is open until 2am (or 4am on Fridays and Saturdays) and Benugo on Cannon Street is open until 7.30pm.

If you want to go on a winter walk but need to avoid ending up in the pub afterwards, traipse towards a park-side café such as The Larder (near Victoria Park), HR Higgins (near Hyde Park), and Ginger and White (near Hampstead Heath).

Eat in a no-booze venue

Lots of people will encourage you to dine out somewhere without booze, like a curry house. It’s a great idea, but if your date brings a bottle of wine then you won’t stick to the lemonades for long. What you really want is somewhere with a decent non-alcoholic drinks menu — Maida in Bethnal Green, for instance, serves great milkshakes (just check out Jay Rayner’s review), and Tayyab’s lassi is off the chain. Sites like Zabihah maintain a list of halal restaurants in London, which don’t serve alcohol.

Veggie restaurants Food for Thought in Neal’s Yard, Govinda’s in Soho and The Bonnington Café in Vauxhall have all left alcohol off their menus.

Go for breakfast or brunch. True, usually a staple of a ‘morning after’ date but sometimes you can dissuade people from drinking before noon. E Pellicci’s is a classic, and won’t try to flog you a mimosa with your fry-up.

You could also wander out for gelato — there are plenty of venues on Old Compton Street and round Covent Garden, and not a beer tap or cork in sight. For a grown-up treat, visit an Amorino on Old Compton Street or Garrick Street (open till 12am) or Gelupo (open till 10.30pm).

Visit an exhibition

All the big museums and galleries serve fabulous beer and wine. Drat. But Benugo has a non-alcoholic venue, the Shake Bar, in the Science Museum.

Smaller venues like the Flowers Gallery in Hoxton are too little to have their own caffs, but are conveniently close to cute coffee shops such as Paper & Cup. Other no-frills galleries include the White Cube in Bermondsey (near a nice Monmouth Coffee shop) or Blain Southern (near a nice Taylor Street Baristas).

Learn something

Places that normally offer light-hearted evening craft classes are a no-no if you can’t resist temptation — for example, Drink Shop Do in King’s Cross is boozy, and so is The Book Club in Shoreditch. But if you want to learn something other than the best way to shot flaming sambuca, you could make sushi in Soho with Yo Sushi (the ‘Rice and Rolls’ class £50 for two people)…

…Or attend drop-in pottery classes at Hackney City Farm (Wednesday and Thursday evenings, 7pm-9pm, £20 for two).

Alternative London is one of several companies offering guided tours of some of the capital’s best street art. These begin and end in Spitalfields, conveniently near the alcohol-free Nude Espresso on Hanbury Street.

Get active

Scale the dizzy heights of love at the Mile End or Castle Climbing Centres — both have an unlicensed café on the premises if you want to have a coffee afterwards.

Hop on a Pashley in Waterloo and take a Tally Ho! bike tour of London

Appoint yourself as the designated driver and enjoy a cast-iron excuse to turn down booze. Top tips for winter trips would have to include eating fish and chips in Brighton or Bexhill, sipping tea in Hampton Court, or walking in the Chilterns.

Two of the outdoor ice rinks are still open, but you’ll have to dodge a Heineken bar at the Canary Wharf rink (open until 16 February) and a full bar at Hampton Court rink (open until 12 January). If you really can’t stand the temptation to booze, the Lee Valley Ice Centre in Clapton has only a saintly Starbucks on site.

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Obviously, we can only offer a snapshot of what London has to offer here. So let us know where else one can avoid the booze during Dry January.

By Ellie Broughton

Che Guevara in a conga line in a kindergarten in Shanghai, 1960.

Katharine Hepburn being awesome.

Continuing our series of short fiction set in, or influenced by London. This week, Stephen Lynch conjures the awkwardness of flat hunting.

Compatibility

This won’t work, she thinks.

The four of them stand side by side, lined up along the kitchen counter, backlit by the late afternoon sunlight, while she sits before them at the table. They smile and finish each others’ sentences and laugh and ask her if she wants coffee. Or something a little stronger, laughs the Australian, you being where you’re from. She wants to tell them she doesn’t drink though she doesn’t want the reaction: But you’re Irish!

And they’re Australian, Indian, Polish and Japanese-American. It’s like the UN in this place, says the Australian and they all laugh.

No, she thinks, this won’t work.

They fire off questions and she answers. Nineteen, she says. College, she says. Geo-science, she says. At a friend’s place, she says. Need my own space, she says. Hopefully before college starts, she says.

They’re all students themselves. Computer Science. English Lit. Economics. Drama.

Only hours before, she sat in another kitchen and listened to the warnings of a Chinese landlady. The room on offer was drab and the kitchen smelled of wet clothes. The old lady’s tales of hoodies and joyriders made her uneasy. Before that she’d struggled with conversation and weak tea in a council flat in Brixton, hosted by a balding man in his forties who said she reminded him of his daughter. You’ve got her eyes, he said. He put his hands in his pockets, took them out again, then put them back in.

Her friend Abigail says London takes a bit of getting used to. But Abigail walks around like she runs the place. She has her own apartment and an English boyfriend. She’s adopted a knowing cackle, throws her nights away in Shoreditch and talks of dropping out of college. You can crash on my couch for as long as you want, says Abigail and then asks if she’s had any luck finding a place? Any luck at all? Things were different back home. Millennia ago.

We think of each other as friends, says the Australian and they all nod.

We want someone who doesn’t just sit in their room all the time, they say.

We go on holidays together sometimes, said the Australian.

We went to Barcelona last summer, said the Pole.

She sees pictures they’ve taken of each other stuck to the fridge with cat-shaped magnets. Big smiles and peace signs. She sees similarities in the way they dress. Jeans and primary colours. Throughout the house their personalities are everywhere — the skirting boards along the hallway strung with Christmas lights, Chinese lanterns in the lounge, a salvaged mannequin propped up in the kitchen corner sporting cowboy hat and shades.

This won’t work, she thinks.

She’s almost certain there are sweat patches at this stage. She regrets wearing sky blue. As her face begins to ache, she wonders if her smile looks fake to them. She feels the edges of her mouth tremble a little from the effort. She wishes they’d look away for a moment, become distracted with something, so that she could clear her throat, shift in her seat, change position. Because with them all looking at her, all eight eyes of them, she feels any movement would signal her discomfort and that discomfort would have to be dealt with.

Oh hey, says the Australian, you should see the garden.

We have a make-shift fountain.

Lena’s planning a pond.

Come on.

The four of them separate from the counter. She stands and the world tilts. Sunlight beams off the cutlery rack on the counter, coming at her in skewed angles. Her chair won’t push back, the legs stuck in a groove in the tiles. She pushes and it tilts, she pushes again and it falls, cracking loudly. She stutters apologies, trying to step free of the upended chair legs as the Australian reaches to pick it up. Her head is still spinning and she steadies herself with a hand on the table. Her breath catches in her throat and she blurts some noise from deep inside her and she tries to hide it with a cough but suddenly her shoulders are racking and the tears come — hot and uncontrollable and unexpected.

Oh dear, says the Japanese American.

The Australian picks the chair up and sits her back down. She covers her face as she tries to regain her composure. She worries about smeared make-up. Red cheeks.

They offer tissues and reassurance and cautious hands on the shoulder.

I’m sorry, she says.

She looks up at them and sees nothing but sympathy. She sees looks of concern and knows she doesn’t need to see anything more. She sees these people in their sincerity and sees how they could be her safety net as she stretches out, branches out, reaches out.

Maybe, she thinks. Maybe this will work.

No, they think, as they look down at her.

No, this won’t work.

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Copyright, Stephen Lynch 2013. Stephen is co-editor of the online short fiction magazine The Red Line. Image by M@.

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Submissions for this column should be sent to fiction@londonist.com. Entries must be no more than 1,000 words, and must be set in London, or strongly inspired by the city. Full details here.

Previously in this series

• Amelie: Narges Rashidi considers the interactions of three people on a District Line tube.
• Old Nichol: Jill Fricker evokes the woes of the old East End.

Welcome to our Dining Beyond Zone 1 series of restaurant reviews, dedicated to seeking out quality local places to dine beyond the frenzy of Central London.

For all the noise made about still oh-so-trendy Brixton Village, there’s barely a squeak to be heard about other dining options in the area.  That’s not to say that there aren’t any, of course. In fact, several local spots have opened with far less fanfare over the past months and years, including The Courtesan, just a touch further up Atlantic Road than any Village visitor would need to travel.

Just over a year old but recently refurbished and re-imagined, it’s lately received some attention by way of a particularly unflattering Evening Standard review. It’s fair to say that our experience was very different.  They say first impressions count, and on walking up to The Courtesan, there’s something deliciously seedy-looking about its tatty red shopfront. All in all, it’s quite appropriate for a cocktail and dim sum restaurant which has a name inspired by prostitution.

While the Market and Village areas of Brixton have lost most of their shab in favour of shine, this feels rawer, edgier and, well, a bit more Brixton. That is — of course — exactly the point, and with dim sum dishes  in excess of a fiver and cocktails supping up the best part of a ten pound note, there’s no denying that the gentrification wave is being ridden, even if the paintwork doesn’t reflect it.

The inside is better tended to, and more dramatically themed than a vintage episode of Changing Rooms. There’s dark wood, low lights, semi-erotic nudie paintings and a rippled wallpaper that is styled to represent the tears of the Courtesan. And the cocktail list is equally over-the-top. The Last Cigar blends lapsang souchong tea, Glenlivet whisky, chilli and a fig liqueur to create a surprisingly smooth and mature drink that leaves your throat warm and your taste buds smoked, while a delicate and silky Yang Yuhuan made of chamomile, rose buds, rum and lychee liqueur is intricately balanced and much less sickly-sweet than it sounds.

With cocktails like that, you need to get through a fair few dim sum if you hope to function the next day. At least, that was our excuse. Steamed Char Siu buns generously filled with caramelised, honey-roast pork are pillow-soft and pleasingly juicy; prawn dumplings are tender to the bite and kick back with a bold hit of wasabi; and spicy Szechuan ribs tick all the sticky, succulent and get-your-face-messy boxes. Previously unheard of Duck Puffs, which are kind of like buttery, crisp, duck-filled sausage rolls, are the highlight though — intensely peppery, indulgent and moreish.

We couldn’t approve more of the idea of the jerk chicken rice parcels, wrapped up in lotus leaves in a nod to the varying cultures of China and Brixton, but the rice-heavy, meat-light and chewy-leaved offering was far from The Courtesan’s finest offering. Perhaps we’d have been more grateful for a bit of stodge if we hadn’t already wolfed down a disgraceful number of dumplings, though.

The Courtesan is trying something different. In terms of inventiveness, the dim sum knock the socks off many a Chinatown eatery, and the barmen show great skill at creating smooth, subtle drinks out of arm-long ingredients lists. Much as its name suggests, this wily venue has everything needed to keep you entertained for the night and have you leaving satisfied, albeit a little lighter in the wallet. It wasn’t full when we visited, but rumour has it they’re about to start advertising in telephone boxes…

The Courtesan, 69-73 Atlantic Road, Brixton, SW9 8PU.

Most days on Londonist, we’re recommending literary events you might like to try, or reviewing London-set novels. But we rarely publish any original fiction ourselves. Thanks to some helpful prompting by a couple of readers (Adam MacLean and Narges Rashidi), we’ve decided to start a regular column for short pieces of fiction set in, or inspired by, London. And anyone can enter.

What we’re looking for

• Your story has to be either set in London, or else draw heavy inspiration from it (e.g. astronaut stuck on Mars, but dreaming of London).
• It should be previously unpublished.
• To keep things snappy and challenging, we’ll reject anything over 1,000 words, though you can be all minimalist and go for far fewer words if that works for you.
• Any genre and form welcome, from horror to romance; epistolary to monologue.
• We’re only going to publish one per week, which means only the very best entries will be selected. So please don’t despair if you don’t get chosen.
• There’s no money in it — at least initially, this is just a bit of fun, to show off your talents and see if the idea can work on Londonist. If the series is successful, we might organise prizes and stuff down the line. Who knows?
• There’s no deadline for submission. The series will start as soon as we get a worthy entry, and will run indefinitely.

To enter, simply send your story to fiction@londonist.com. We’ll respond to all entries, although it might take a few days if we’re a bit swamped.