Densely populated areas are not necessarily slums. Among the densest places in the UK are Mayfair and Pimlico, or the west ends of Glasgow and Edinburgh. With their expensive stucco squares and sandstone tenements, these places are by no means dystopian. Given their extreme desirability, an extremely high population density is clearly not so alarming.

I look out of the window of an apartment, ingenuously furnished by an Englishwoman I have never met, while I put down the phone, then pick it up again, dial and hang up, I look out at the lazy London night across the square that is emptying of active beings and their resolute steps, to be filled for a while - an interregnum - by the inactive and their erratic steps, which lead them now to the waste-paper bins and dustbins into which they plunge their ash-grey arms, rummaging for treasures invisible to us or for the fortuitous wages of another day survived, when it is still not not yet night but certainly not day either, or when it is still today for those going home or getting dressed to go out again, but is already yesterday for those who come and go and never find their bearings. I look up to seek out and continue seeing the living world that knows where it’s going and to which I imagine I still belong, which finds shelter in its illuminated interiors from the crepuscular ash of the air, so as to distance myself from and not be assimilated by the disoriented world of those ghosts who plunge in among the rubbish and become one with it; I look out across the traffic that is growing quieter now and beyond the shadowy beggars and the stragglers - they run five or six steps and leap onto the back of the double-decker bus just pulling away, the women’s high heels scrape on the ground, they’re taking a real risk - I look up past the trees and the statue on the other side of the square, at the smart hotel and the vast offices and the private houses that are homes to families, but not always”.