Somedays you wonder if there’s any point opening your eyes. Despite the miracles of daylight saving, when I get up to go to work it’s dark. In our cramped flat trapped between the motorway, tube lines, and ‘retail parks’ (such a horrible word, evoking branded daffodils and planting gold to harvest tat), it’s brown outside the windows, and even darker in our windowless bathroom. I shower, get dressed and head out into the snow, reflecting meagre light. As the tube heads under Hampstead hill, there’s a rosy glow spreading.

I get to work. I sit at a desk. I work through lunch. Outside the great ten foot windows, it’s light, clouds dance, the De Beers’ chairman’s helitaxi winds up on the next rooftop and wap-wap-waps him back to his estate over us city-bound scurriers. It gets dark, early. It’s night. I finish work, late, again. Homeward.

The snow is still heavy around our home, deep and crisp and deadly, patches like teflon and glass, spots where idiots have tried to wash it away with water. The street-light outside our house is broken. Inside, it’s cold and dark. The boiler’s broken. I huddle up to the lamp for warmth and wait for morning.