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1 - Front Cover 2 - James-Lee Duffy 3 - Alex de Mora 4 - John Slade 5 - Lucy Pass 6 - MarioMaplé 7 - James-Lee Duffy 8 - Liam Baldwin 9 - Thomas J Price 10 - Ardriano Fidalgo 11 - Irvine Welsh 12 T.Wesley Snead 13 - Shepard Fairey 14 - Tom Medwell 15 - Patrick Morales-Lee 16/17 - James-Lee Duffy 18 - Antony Micallef 19 - Kate Berry 20 - Jim Wright 21 - Lucie Flynn 22 - Paul Camo 23 - ASL 24 Borderlines 25 - Louis Moss 26/27 - Josh Jones 28 - Andy Welland 29 - Vanya Severov 30 - Barry Reigate 31 - Alex May Hughes 32/33 - Allan Kwok 34 -James-Lee Duffy 35 - daft-apeth 36/37 - Katherine Templar 38 - Emily Malice 39 - Bivouac 40 - Stephen Moynihan 41 - Matthew Green 42 - Alexandra Diez de Rivera 43 - Harry Campbell 44 - Johnnyx 45 - A.CE London 46 - Daniel David Freeman 47 - Josh Jones 48 - Santanu Hazarika 49 - Grace Humberstone 50 - 51 - Tom Oldham 52 - James-Lee Duffy © Pavement Licker 2021
Hello Monday! Let us swathe this week in romance. A rainy Tuesday morning in a Covid torn planet... what better time to spread L-O-V-E than when the chips are down? Let’s show our unique, special beauty to the world, ‘cause after all, our cuntishness is just the very same as everyone else’s. Always saw Wednesday as the sexy librarian of week days. Standing in the background, keeping out of the way, but ready to spring into action with a removal of its black framed glasses and a smouldering pout with a husky ‘can I help you?’ Is there any day sexier than a Thursday? It shimmies up to you, literally stinking of tempting weekend mischief. Succumb to this rare beauty, even though it may lead you to some dark places. But it’s worth throwing that dice occasionally. So do not resist. Succumb. Friday places a blindfold over your eyes as it guides you into the lift of a luxury boutique hotel. As it opens the room door you can hear the rustle of Ann Summers bags and clinking of ice from the well-stocked mini bar as it whispers: ‘tell me what you want.’ Play nice. Saturday: a relentless demon of a day who will not stop until it’s shagged us all senseless. And who are we to resist? Sunday is tough bastard. They think it’s their day where they reset you into wage slavery. Is it fuck. So you have to treat Sunday rough, show it who’s boss and hammer the bastard relentlessly. The recovery must be on Monday or Tuesday ie: their time. Attack!
So I’m sitting at a bar one night, I swear this is true, in one of those bars you get on a road with the whole front door thing. I forget the name, Grëtçhên or Frãncö or Nåżčär y’know. I dunno how I got there. I guess I’d come down off the trains and the light caught my eye. So I’m sitting at the bar and it’s not busy, just bustling. Like, I don’t have to wait long to catch the bartender’s eye. The sort of bar that’s been in the neighbourhood for a while but people are only just discovering it. It wasn’t a bad place. The folk in there were pretty cool. Not like in their clothes or anything, just like they didn’t bump into me and they seemed to having a good time. I guess what I’m saying is they weren’t assholes. The bartender was cool. She said hey when I sat down and I was like I’d like a beer please and she was like we’ve got all these beers and I was like can I have one of those beers please and she was like, sure and gave me it. Some other guy asked for a run down on all the beers and what they were about and she was like these are fairly common beers honey, if you don’t know what beer you want just choose a label that’s prettiest. I liked that. That guy went for a Red Stripe. So make what you will of that. I’d been there maybe for 4 beers when a bunch of definite regulars came in. Like they all came through the door in a tight knot. A knuckle of faces, all cheery, talking louder than everyone else and had that swagger of knowing how the room worked and had long shitty coats and their caps on backwards like a tangle of Lost Boys. They passed me by and headed straight to the back for the pool table. I paid them no heed. They were noisy. Not noisy: boisterous. But it’s a bar. It should be like that. After probably five ten minutes, a Lost Boy heads over to the spot right next to me. He’s got blonde locks hanging out of his Bulls cap and a faux fur gilet on. And he’s got real long fingernails. Not like nice Harry Styles’ manicured, but all janky. And long. Like a gross guitar player. Yo he says to the bartender and she was like hey and he was like can I have six meowtinis and I’m like that guy can’t talk right but whatever. And the bartender was like OK and I figured she knew the guy and his bad annunciation and I looked back at my beer and got on with my thinking. This guy says that he’s gotta take a leak and will be back, which is normal. The bartender was clattering about and I was doodling with my finger in a pool of beer when he comes back and she’s like here’s the first two and pushes a couple of like, three quarter size cat dishes across the bar. I’m like what the fuck is this? They’ve got pickled onions floating about in them so I’m like are those Gibson meowtinis and she’s like yeah that’s the house way. This bro creeps off with the two dishes and the bartender gets on with the rest of the order. I’m thinking oh shit, is this the kind of bar that turns whack after dark. Novelty servings. Coupla minutes later this guy’s back for the rest of his drinks — takes three of them and, as he turns, sees me staring at these kitty dishes with hard booze in and he gives me this weird smile. With his whole face.
Back he comes for the final kitty dish drink, and he just kinda zeroes in on it, just like, well, like a cat he zips up to the bar, head hanging low and he’s just lapping at the dish like, well like a fucking cat. Lap, lap, lap, lap’s all I can hear. He lifts his head up and says BRAVO to the bartender who’s like yeah cool, thanks and gets on with her job. This guy hugs his dish away from me as if I’m gonna try and get in on the action and scurries off to his buddies. I try to catch the bartender’s eye but she’s busy so I look over to the pool table and, and and this is the truth, the whole mob of them have their dishes on the floor and are lapping away madly at their drinks. Like fucking alley cats. Like actual fucking alley cats. In this nondescript bar down from the station. So I dunno what to do - like I guess it’s some frat game or something and I slowly turn back to the bar and lock eyes with the bartender and she’s like yeah, right? I’m like whatthe? and she says it started off when one of them read on some cocktail blog that lapping your drink like a cat intensifies the flavors. I’m like naah that can’t be right. And she’s like, yeah that’s what it is, they say everyone’s doing it in London so it must be the latest drink thing right? But the thing is - they swear by it. Says it actually makes you taste in 4D. Pretty much everyone here’s got on board and who am I to stop it? As she says that I swing around and you ain’t gonna believe this, she’s fucking right. The whole place is dipping their tongues into their drink and going at it like a freshman between his first pair of thighs. The bartender opens her mouth to speak again: Thing is, she says. The thing is– but blondie Lost Boy’s back with his dishes all stacked up spilling dregs around and he’s like, same again to the bartender and she shuts right up and turns to make the drinks, leaving us in a heavy silence. Blondie looks at me with his face smile thing, then sticks his tongue out to get spilled booze off his hand but he licks it real slow and then wipes his face with his sticky old hand. Which you know, I’d find a bit weird at the best of times but then. Then I swear, I swear to you now I can see whiskers growing right out of his face. And at a rate. His eyes are yellowy and his ears do this creepy twitching thing. He stares at me staring at him. His awful yowl laugh makes his buddies all prick up their ears and look over. Then they start slinking over in my direction. I notice a couple of other heads at the tables start up from their dishes and look my way too. So you know, I never want trouble. So I drop a couple of dollars and busted out of there. I forget the name of the place. It’ll come back to me.
Order a drink. Whiskey, cocktail, hand gel, whatever. Listen carefully. The drink is not in your hand. The room, your hand and cocktail are all in your head. And what, how and why are you tasting it? No one knows… well, potentially Luca Turin and his Bioelectronic Vibrational Theory of Olfaction might – but that’s so crazy you’ll need another drink. 100 years ago there was an event called the Ultraviolet Catastrophe. It was epic. It was the point in which the greatest scientists in the world realised there’s a huge problem. The classical theories in physics about how the world worked didn’t explain what they observed. They were all way wrong. Max Planck proposed a new theory of how stuff works: Quantum Theory. Which was like when Galileo said the world was round and truth crumbled. It was one of those moments. But everyone pretended it wasn’t happening. Because quantum theory was WHACKO. It IS WHACKO. It melts your mind. It’s also true. Get a third drink. Taste it. That’s important, as this is now a science experiment. In classical theory (relativity), cause leads to effect; time goes past, present, future; molecules can only be one thing; if things are miles apart, they are miles apart; Schrödinger’s cat is either alive OR dead and I can’t walk through that wall. In quantum theory, however, there are
no rules. Cause might lead to effect; all time happens all at once; molecules can be more than one thing at the same time; things miles apart are entangled by an unknown force; Schrödinger’s cat is alive AND dead, and I can walk through that wall. Got that? No? That’s OK. It’s said that if you understand quantum physics then you don’t. It’s a lot to get your head around. Remember this is a science experiment. Reach out and pick your drink up. Take a sip. Taste it. That, my friend, is quantum in action. Taste, comes partly from the flavour molecules in the drink that hit your tongue, and partly from the scent molecules that you inhale with it. When you inhale, smell scent molecules stick to a layer of mucus in the nose. Cells dangling directly from the brain in that mucus, attract the scent molecules and recognise them, sending an electrical message back to the brain. The brain then wakes up the limbic system — the
ancient part that triggers memories and emotions. Like how a whiff of an ex’s perfume can crush your heart. It’s also vital for survival, from smelling poison and liars, to who it would be genetically advisable to mate with – it is a phenomenal power. Your nose can detect a skunk from only 0.000,000,000,000,071 of an ounce of offensive spray. Half the time it’s working subconsciously to work out who and what is around you. Over two thirds of people smell their hands without realising it directly after they shake hands with someone new. As if you needed another reason to never shake hands with a stranger again. No one could work out how tongue and nose receptors worked. The best theory was the ‘docking theory of olfaction’. This proposed that the scent molecule’s character was due to its unique shape. This fitted nicely into the nose receptor cell, which recognised and then translated it into the sense of smell in the brain. The problem was, some very different smells have exactly the same ‘shape’. It didn’t make sense, at least not within the realms of classical physics. But what if we go quantum? The biophysicist, Luca Turin, proposed that scent receptors might not recognise just the different shapes of the scent molecules but the way they vibrated with energy in the infrared spectrum. He thought that they worked in a quantum way. This was pretty fucking radical as, according to classical physics, this is completely impossible. So why is
smell all quantum weirdness? Well, it’s like this: when a scent molecule binds to a nose receptor there is a huge wall that a bit of it (the electron) needs to get to the other side of, so you can recognise it. Now to get to the other side, the electron does an insane thing called quantum tunnelling. This is actually technically impossible. Why? Because quantum tunnelling is like kicking a football through a hill. (Thanks to Jim Alkhalili for this little metaphor.) In classical physics you have to kick the ball up the hill and down the other side. In the quantum world, you don’t. You kick it halfway up, it disappears, and reappears instantaneously on the other side. It doesn’t go through the hill by force. No, it can’t, it physically can’t, and that would take a certain amount of time. It doesn’t go through it physically. But somehow it gets to the other side without going over, and without taking any time at all. One minute it’s there, then it disappears and reappears on the other side. And this is happening every single time you smell or taste anything. As you smell, the scent electron heads towards a really high wall, suddenly disappears and reappears on the other side instantaneously. It goes through an uncrossable wall in your nose cell to get to the right bit. It goes THROUGH A FUCKING WALL, instantaneously. Insane. Impossible. Totally fucked up. It breaks the laws of physics that you and I were taught. It defies reality. But then of course, there is no true reality. That drink is not in your hand, or even in the room. The drink, your hand and the whole fucking room is in your head.
I’m working in a café and an online life coach is lecturing someone on his phone behind me: “sometimes when you leave the gym it’s good to not shower and just get to know your body as you walk home” “when you exercise your body’s crying out for love.” The fuck is he on about? He left. He was wearing a grey tracksuit and beige crocs.
I’m in a café and a lady outside just bowed at a tree and I cannot stop laughing.
I’m waiting for Lauren in a vegetarian café quietly singing, ‘smash me avocado’ to the tune of Rock Me Amadeus by Falco. A drain just straight blew up exploded on Finchley Road. BOOOOOF! it went, and all this yellow smoke billowed out of it. The lady who runs the café I’m in, picked up a chair, ran out and pointed it at the smoking hole like a lion tamer. When she came back I was like, “why did you do that?” She said she felt like she should do something. The fire brigade came and pointed at it with their fingers, I guess because they forgot their chairs, and then it rained so hard everyone went away.
I was in a café yesterday and a man came in and said, “the usual please” and the person behind the bar was new and was like “what’s that?” and he turned to the owner and said “she’ll know” and the owner said “soup?” and the guy was like “nah I don’t want soup today. Can I have a cortado?” I’m sitting in café called Straight Outta Archway drinking fucking hibiscus tea.
The café I’m in just played In Too Deep and Stacey’s Mom... If they play Lit I’m flipping the tables. They played Jessie J. I was about to put on my denim cut offs. I had an excellent experience this morning in a café. As I looked across the tables towards the window to look at the rain I locked eyes with a German lady in her 60s, at the exact moment she put a whole slice of bread with a fried egg wobbling on top of it in her mouth. We stared at each other and with a tiny movement, and without blinking, she sucked the yolk in under her top lip. It was so weird. I loved it. I’ve been laughing all morning.