Through Temple Bar into Paternoster Square. There’s a Mussolini-like modernism about it. Neo-classical fascist. It’s a cold Sunday night and a few souls criss-cross the asymmetrical space, it could be Rimini. I feel like a shape in a Di Chirico painting. It is ghostly and out-of-place which fits this city of dislocation. I’m pulled in strange directions from one side of the square to another, then under a portico which has sprouted concrete umbrellas from its ceiling.

I escape the vortex inside Paternoster Square and find myself looking into Hat and Mitre Court EC1, 10 yards long, chain-link gate, fragment of mediaeval street plan. Not a soul around. Brewhouse Yard, gleaming new and empty. The news from Clerkenwell is that loft development kills the street. The only flaneur round here is the deli of that name on Farringdon Road.

At Borat’s shop a 12-year old talks into his mobile phone. “That’s CID just gone past”.
“How can you tell?”. “I know, right”. They’re in a heightened state. Training their Bull Terrier to attack. Small time criminals in embryo.