London, this battered, bruised, yet always juicy plum of a place, is alas never quiet. Sound leaks in as insidiously as draughts do in the bleak winter evenings. Where I am now in pleasant, affable Chiswick, I can hear the distant surf-like roar of the High Road, a gurgling fridge freezer, a hot water pump, and next door, a brace or so of drama students, who've been badged as the kids from Fame, practicing arias.

London, as I once wrote of Saigon, is an unfinished symphony of noise. If nothing else, noise is other people, who are n't necessarily hell, just misguided and unthinking.