I rode through rows of Victorian terraces, then over the South Circular where things got shabbier and more modern. I traced the length of two long cemeteries, and then I was riding uphill to Downhill, wondering what that said about the optimism of the people who had named the place. Though of course, downhill is an easier journey than uphill. It’s not all negative connotations. Off a road of chicken shops and nail bars I climbed my way through an estate of small pebble-dashed houses much like the estates my school friends had lived in, one hundred and fifty shades of brown. It was as quiet as those estates too, the middle of the day. Concrete driveways and cars, tradesmen’s vans parked up, the occasional senior citizen pulling a two-wheel shopping trolley.

I liked the last flat the estate agent showed me. It was on the ground floor of a council block, with a large living room, two bedrooms and a kitchen with a door leading out to a strip of grass. I walked to the end and turned around and a man smoking on the balcony above raised his hand in a greeting I returned. ‘Good afternoon!’ I shouted. ‘Good afternoon!’ he shouted back, in an Eastern European accent.

‘Is this is a nice place to live?’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Are you nice? I am nice.’

‘Great neighbours, see,’ said the estate agent. ‘Very friendly.’

‘I’m nice,’ I shouted back at him.

‘Are you sure?’ he shouted. ‘You don’t look nice.’ Then he grinned.

A patch of grass to lie on, on a summer’s day. A neighbour to wave at. A lawnmower. That paint you put on fences. Raking up the leaves in autumn. Barbecues with friends. A woman to come home to. A child to take to the park on a Saturday morning. It was not entirely implausible. Or undesirable. Not entirely.

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