With grit and humour Zeppelins takes on the speed and surrealist chaos of the metropolis at the beginning of the 21st century. On the look-out for abandoned scraps to make sense of the sprawling whole – senseless advertisements, discarded notes, overheard conversations – McCabe hawks the fringes and thoroughfares for his sources. He discovers an underground of the cynical and power-hungry, shamelessly clashing registers with experiences of redemptive warmth and love.

Urban, inquisitive and with a restless interest in the now, McCabe writes about Pete Doherty's arrests and the Essex reaction to England's exit from the World Cup in 2006. Playful and serious, with an eye for the strange and comedic, this is a book about what it means to be alive in a city as we head towards the second decade of the new century.