Sometimes you are rewarded with things you imagine nobody else has noticed. Sometimes when you stand on the street looking upwards, a stranger will stop and look upwards as well to see what it is you’re looking at. I like it when you both see something interesting - maybe a pair of old trainers slung across an electricity line or some pigeons mating on a window ledge or a carving of an elephant on an old building - and you smile at each other as if you’ve both discovered a secret and then you go on your separate ways.

Note to self: watch out for dog mess

… and lamp posts

…and holes

My landlord owns 20 one-bedroom flats in north London. I wouldn’t mind (much) if this was his profession, but he calls it his “hobby” (he is a judge; I think buy-to-letters should be criminalised). The buy-to-let industry that has boomed over the last 10 years has priced out first time buyers, people on low incomes and young families, and ruined communities. How brilliant would it be if people with more than one buy-to-let property were seen as socially unacceptable as driving a 4×4? Instead, they are congratulated and admired. Everyone wants to be an amateur landlord with cheap laminate flooring. It makes me angry.