The clocktower is framed by the notorious Market Estate, “hell” to its residents. Collapsed ceilings, exposed wires, boarded-up windows, doors off their hinges. One such heavily reinforced door fell on a 12 year-old boy and killed him. Hands have been washed of the affair at the Town Hall. The housing association has handed it back to the council and now they’re knocking the lot down.

The arches of the Clock Tower cast shadows that create a scene like a De Chirico painting. It’s deathly quiet and I have the odd sensation of being in an Italian piazza del duomo at lunchtime. The burnt out post box, CCTV and sudden burst of violent language pull me back to the reality of a condemned GLC Housing Scheme. Groups of teens in sportswear with a gangsta rap blaring ghetto blaster stand on a white petal-strewn path. It brings out the romantic in me, the one that ignores the smashed in windows of the Islington Scouts blue minibus.