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Patrick Dalton: I haven't left my house yet, but y'know, sometimes you need to take the day off. I find myself looking for things that are shit all the time now. It's taken over my life.That's great. How and when did that process start?
I'm not sure. A couple of years ago I was alright with myself, now I think I'm a cunt.

It's definitely made me more pedantic. There's a pub on Liverpool Street that does my head in, for example. I think it's supposed to be called Dirty Dick's, but there's no apostrophe, so it just becomes a statement – "Dirty Dicks". Pedantry's a trait I hate in other people, and now I hate it in myself. The whole process has made me loathe myself a bit, really. I used to go out and take photos of my friends at parties, but now I just take photos of shit graffiti and stuff.You wouldn't do it if you didn't enjoy it though, right?
Yeah, it has its moments. I'd never been to Leyton before, but travelled all the way out there once just because there's a hair salon there called Peculiar Unisex Hair. I always feel like I'm on safari. My Facebook group "helped" to get me out of the house. I would just stay in, taking shots out of my window, but as more people became aware of the collection of shit I was putting on the internet, the more suggestions for locations I got.Someone told me I should go out to Kilburn, for example. It was a fucking goldmine.
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That's a tough one. No, I think I'm yet to discover the shittiest place. Tooting market on a Saturday afternoon's good, as is New Cross. I don't actually think that London is shit. I think there's a little bit of shit in it, but the word "shit" in the title refers to all of London's random, indefinable stuff. Its ephemera. It's not that shit really is it, this city?Oh no, not at all. I like it here. But do you think these little floating islands of crap contribute to the sardonic sense of humour that's always seemed to make sense in London?
Completely. London has a great sense of humour. One of things it's best at is opportunistic graffiti. People just see something and think, 'Right, I'm gonna change that now'. I love how those things don't last a second before someone goes 'Fuck off'. In the book, there's a picture of a sign that reads "Gun Street Closed". Underneath, someone's written "Run Out of Guns". I like that. I can't get enough of it.

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I think it would be wrong. I do think, though, that if you're living in a town up in the North East and you see London on The Apprentice, it looks amazing. Even I see that and think, "Shit! I wish I lived there." But obviously that's not London – the kind of things that fashion the city are the smaller details. You have to look inward at them. You can't sit around talking about how big and amazing London is because it'll pass you by completely.

I'm not sure. What kind of message is that sending? I don't know what it means. It's raining guns. What sort of thing is that to put in a school?KEV KHARASPatrick Dalton's Shit London: Snapshots from a City on the Edge is out on Friday through Anova Books. Track Dalton's never-ending quest to catalogue all London's minutiae at the Shit London website.
