The cool October wind slips beneath the collar of my denim jacket, having scattered yesterday’s summer heat among terrace chairs and along the kerbs of the streets by the river. It tears the first withered leaves from the trees, strewing them across the sleepy roads of a city not yet awake.

 

A great stone mass, pale as a shard of moonlight, gleams and shimmers in the peach-coloured light before dawn. It casts the last remnants of night’s mist from its ancient shoulders and stares at me through the vacant glass sockets of its windows. Houses awaken, warm little lights flickering here and there; residents draw back heavy curtains after a few short hours of sleep, listening in the quiet of their kitchens as coffee comes to the boil. Someone smokes, leaning on the railings of a French balcony, drawing lazily on a cigarette.

 

Thin as power lines, the morning traffic bleeds through the streets, crackling with electricity, moving slowly beneath the glitter of sunlight caught in windscreens. Along Victoria Embankment, it flows like the oil of the Amphisbaena, dividing the city in two: its heads wake by turns, then drift into half-sleep, but never truly close their eyes. At the black gates of Number Ten Downing Street, a faceless sentry stands, sleepless and untouched by time, as he has for three centuries. Currents of wind, smelling of withered maple, wander between the buildings like a mischievous five-year-old, darting from street to street and teasing a cat — between faceted glass towers, Victorian terraces and peeling blocks of flats. Tomorrow, the forecasters promise rain again, beating the red and yellow leaves into the asphalt; by midday, warm sunlight will dry the pavements and cobbles, concealing every trace of autumn.

 

The corporate children of yesterday descend into the Underground at Seven Sisters and Garden Park and scatter towards their offices, clutching coffee from Nero and Gail’s Bakery in place of a second breakfast. They have left their school notebooks and books behind in the room upstairs at their parents’ house, while ink-stained fingers have given way to immaculate manicures. All their childhood dreams will remain in a notebook covered in coloured-ink scribbles, with carefully pasted stickers and dried daisies pressed between its pages, hastily hidden in one of the boxes beneath the bed. A night monster has laid its shaggy head upon it, guarding it like a treasure. In their pockets now are paper Underground travel cards, a black lighter, coins bearing the Queen’s face, loose Marlboro tobacco and aniseed sweets. Childhood has gone off to play hide-and-seek with other children — children in blue uniforms with embroidered crests, white knee socks and a couple of crumpled chocolate frogs in their backpacks — leaving them only an evening ticket to the theatre and a glass of tart Bordeaux before bed.