On the Metropolitan line, heading North by North West, a small boy dressed in a blue puffa jacket emblazoned with yellow lightning flashes – to show he is a live wire – determinedly pulls himself up on the bar above the seats where his parents are sitting and languidly swings himself along with the same seemingly effortless grace you’d expect from an orang utan. His parents ignore him and no one else pays him any mind. The loneliness of the short distance gymnast.

In Chili Masala at the bottom of the hill, waiting for a take out while being serenaded by film music on the flat screen on the wall, all yearning, echoey lyrics and shots of beautiful young people staring longingly at each other on dancefloors and across roofs: or doing formation dances on the tops of steam trains – as you do. Rather more surreal, a grim faced man in black standing in front of a brand new bright yellow JCB parked in an industrial wasteland straight out of Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” sets about a small army of disposable henchmen, also in black but wearing V for Vendetta masks with a base ball bat and small axe and a choreographed balletic grace. On the wall, a solid home made open fronted MDF box, with the words HAND SANITIS shakily scrawled in sharpie. Empty now of course. I still have a few sachets of Clinell wipes in my back pocket that I tempted to post in it to make it seem a bit less sad.

In the window of one of the flats on the way to the doctors, someone has stuck up one if those centre spread St Georges flag pull outs the Sun does during football tournaments and left it there long afterwards; no more inclined to take it down than I am to remove the Clinell wipes from my back pocket. Over time the ink has faded from the letters not inside the red cross, so it now reads “t’s coming om”.