Lolling in the street outside my flat is a modern fossil; a relic from a time before credit crunch; something as remote in time as Genghis Khan's hordes sweeping through Central Asia. It's a stretch Hummer. A long, multi-wheeled, snub-nosed sauropod of a car yawning and snorting. Squatting like a toad. Waiting to gorge itself on a horde of young women out for the night.

Only where I live can they still be thought of as edgy and redolent of mean and cool, when all they actually represent now is the busted flush of a casino economy.