‘I was at Glen’s Christmas drinks last night.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow, that’s so cool.’

‘Yeah. It is.’

‘How many people were there?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Nine?’

‘Nine. Wow. That’s such a good number, that’s brilliant.’

Nine? What the frigging chips is so good about bloody nine? What would the woman sitting next to me at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court have said if the woman sitting next to her at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court had told her there had only been eight? Or ten?

Would the level of her affected joy have been marginally diluted or would she have been equally elated in identical measures proportionate to her disappointment at the lesser figure?

What if, God forbid, there had only been three guests, or seventy-two? Would she have broken down in tears, reached for the nearest implement with which to belabour her around the chops? Taken an axe, taken an overdose, hurled herself in a nearby oven? The mind boggles and I daren’t think. A pock-marked man (or he could have been a woman – hard to tell in bureaucratic strip-lighting) was being sentenced for shoplifting pork chops and a slice of steak, before the beak yet again, another London life heroically crushed by the mundane luck of the eternally provincial.

Last month it was shampoo and community service, April was gin and probation.

The conversation continued thus:

‘Where was the party?’

‘Brent Cross.’

‘Wow, that’s incredible. I love Brent Cross. There are so many trains near there an-‘

‘I missed the last train.’

‘Really? Oh my God. What did you do?’

‘I got a bus.’

‘Wow, that’s great, that was lucky.’

‘Yes it was.’

‘You going next year?’

‘No.’

Can living in London get any better than this?