Now that we are back on Greenwich Meantime, and the nights start in the afternoon, I’m reminded of one of my grandmother’s phrases “Don’t half get late early doesn’t it?”

At the corner of the park there is an area of once ornamental plants that is now decidedly unkempt and casually rubbish strewn. It abuts an area with a few trees that provide cover to ground level and a dark and rather menacing glade alongside the path that everyone hurries past. This has become something of a haven for rats in the last few months.

They are definitely becoming a bit bolder. On Sunday morning last week several of them were frolicking in the sunlight a little away from a flock of pigeons. One of the pigeons, possibly curious (I don’t know how curious pigeons get) waddled over and got into one of the rat’s personal space, so it jumped up and snapped at its breast before getting back to moseying around on the grass with a mouth full of feather, as the pigeon, armed with no more than a corn pecking beak and an injured sense of dignity, backed off in a huff. Not quite the Serengeti, but could fit into the latest Attenborough series about urban wildness, given the right camera angle and magnification.

It doesn’t help that some people feed the pigeons, sometimes in a big way, which also feeds the rats; and others dump half eaten fast food near the bins instead of in them. Every night is take out night.

At the other end of the park near the Shisha lounge, another rather plump rat makes one of those bum bouncing runs they do when they are in a bit of a panic, heading for cover, as a fox, magnificently red in the early morning light, stands stock still and watches it with lordly indifference.

Where are the raptors when you need them?

A bit of guerilla gardening might be a good move if the council would agree to it. Put live plants into the scuzzy ornamental patch, having cleared it, and for volunteers to keep them up, along with clearing away the rubbish and undergrowth that gives the rats the cover they need.

The following Sunday morning, another sunny day in which colours in the park seemed to have been reimagined as a painting by David Hockney, there was no sign of the rats on their main territory. Perhaps they were having a lie in.

Most of the park is fine, busy, full of dog walkers, exercise classes, little parliaments of elderly men putting the world to rights, but these sad rodent ridden corners need sorting out.

Someone had vandalised and abandoned an electric hire bike near the shops. It could be a metaphor for what Rishi Sunak is doing to the government’s climate targets.

A bright green double decker arrives with a paint job on the side announcing it as the 1,000th London electric bus, which is good to know. Only 7,000 to go. In Shenzen they converted all 16,000 of their buses to electric in one year, but TFL is doing well by Western standards. The millionth Morris Minor was painted Lilac, which was quite daring for the time.

At the Health Centre in Alperton for my Covid jab and its a real industrial process. The waiting room packed out, the queue half way up the corridor to the entrance. All elderly. All looking for a seat and not always finding it. The space, excitement and bonhomie of the first wave replaced by a kind of unsettled grumpiness as everyone is jumbled too close together cheek by jowl. The bloke in charge of feeding in the queue has an air of can do enthusiasm that shall not be moved, and moves everyone through as quickly as possible. Overhead, possibly covering a camera, someone has placed a nitrite glove that looks like a shrunken blue udder, or an AI plasticated version of “The Beast with Five Fingers”. “Its the horrible hand, its operating again!”

After the rains, a dead slug lies on the pavement like a tiny beached whale.

The houses in Roe Green Village, built originally to house the workers for Airco, look as though they were purpose built for Xmas card scenes. All red brick and high pitched roofs with dense green hedges, just waiting for a thick snowfall, to be scattered with glitter and festooned with, tasteful, lights. Of course, the people who first lived in them built military aircraft in the First World War.

On the way back home, a group of ten middle aged adults, some with lanyards, walk along Roe Green in pairs like an extremely well behaved school crocodile.

On the way up the hill, I pass a man walking down who has some sort of palsy, has his head down a bit concentrating on walking and is shaking his arms like he’s having a bop. So I wish him a good morning as I pass, and he nods. Only connect.