On the pavement outside Kwikfit, two of the monks from the Buddhist Temple on Kingsbury Road, resplendent in smouldering saffron and crimson, but simultanously down to earth in grey woolly socks and hats (a sartorial middle way) walk past. One of them has his nose in a leaflet about life insurance, which he might well have need of if he doesn’t look up before he gets to the edge of the pavement.

When waiting for the 324 bus outside Brent Cross, there is always a steady stream of 112 buses heading for the headily named Tally Ho Corner in North Finchley. To give the bus a bit of panache the destination board on the front reads FINCHLEY Tally Ho! as if grinding up Ballards Lane from one bit of nondescript bit of suburbia to another had all the dash of a hunt of sherried up hoorays jumping their horses pell mell over hedges, and hurtling through the countryside in full tilt pursuit of the foxes that now slink around our bins at night – probably at Tally Ho corner too. The arrival must be an anticlimax, but that exclamation mark gives the journey a bit of imaginary zip. In the same way that there is a suburb of Polokwane in South Africa that is called Nirvana. I don’t suppose its all that, but having it as a destination on the front of a bus…wonderful! Saves all that reincarnation.