The woman finally turns off the Fulham Palace Road into the warren of alphabetically named streets that run down to the river. She stops next to a parking space outside a red-bricked terraced house with an immaculate black-and-white tiled path to the front door, and a glorious riot of phlox and lavender and overblown roses lining the low wall separating it from the street. The parking spot is too small for her outsized SUV, but she elbows her way into it anyway, and parks with her offside back wheel almost fully on the pavement. Anyone with a pushchair will have to go into the road to get past it.

I wait till the woman’s gone inside, and then double-park twenty feet away beside an empty motorcycle bay, and walk down the street to her car.

I don’t have a plan. I don’t need one: the devil looks after his own.

The woman’s left her sunroof open.

In the front garden of a nearby property three wheelie bins are neatly lined up behind the wall: rubbish, recycling and compost. They’re all full; they must be due for collection in the next day or two.

I take a full bag from the rubbish bin, return to the woman’s car and shake the entire contents through the sunroof.

Stinking cat litter. Oozing plastic meat packaging, half-consumed ready meals and – oh, joy – used tampons. I go back to the compost bin and add a scoop of coffee grounds and eggshells and rotting tomatoes to the mess.

When people think of angels, they usually picture cute cherubs with wings floating on clouds. Beneficent guardians taking the wheel to make them swerve just as a tree was about to fall and crush them. Kindly messengers leaving white feathers around the house to let them know their loved ones are watching over them.

But that’s not all they do.

Angels are capable of pitiless destruction, and can destroy a city with a mere gesture of the hand. Just ask the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, whose cities were reduced to nothing but charred ash by two angels raining down sulphur and fire. Every firstborn Egyptian male was killed by the Angel of Death when the Pharaoh refused to let the Israelite slaves go. Whenever God needs to do something really awful, She sends an angel.

The litterbug got off more lightly than she’ll ever know.

kyperlife

kyle and harper get ready to party!

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Hi, Kyper Nation! Welcome back! I hope you’re all enjoying this amazing weather! I’ve been in the garden working on my tan, I think it’s coming along OK? I missed a bit when I put on my sunscreen, look, you can totally see on my shoulder where I couldn’t reach, it’s so annoying!