“I am from the Congo. My sister was killed and my mother was raped. I do not know where is my wife. I come to England with my three children and I pray every day that there will be peace in my country, and one day we can go home. Why must there always be hatred, why can’t we all live in peace?’ pleads the man in the toilet, implores the man in the club, begs the sad black man as he presses soap into the hands of drunks, as he holds out tissues to Shoreditch where no one sees him, where no one’s got time for him, where sometimes he’ll get a few quid for a dab of gel, for holding open the door, for turning a blind eye to the lads in the cubicles, two, three at a time for a midnight sniff and back to the dance floor and Hoxton scarves and the carefully tilted berets of the carefully contrived pillocks, keen to impress and dress like the rest, a jaunty angle for the boys in the bar and the girls on the stairs but gosh, Josh is listening, Josh opens up to the black man from The Congo, bears his soul and his heart: “I know what you mean. I’m half Scottish and I understand being victimised by race. I know what you mean. I really understand you, I feel the same” says Josh and for a moment there he really means it, doesn’t feel the condescension and the patronisation, wants to feel that outsider’s affinity and connection with the scarred black man from the wars of Africa, desperately wants not to feel like another middle-class boy with no convictions, anything better than the cultural emptiness and identity free world of middle-class England, but he knows he’ll forget all about the man in the toilet as soon as he’s back with his mates and the bubbly. But at least he’d made the effort.

Rick Senley is part Transylvanian, Belarusian and Scottish.