Waiting on Elephant and Castle platform today, thought of the time we had deep snow in London one winter- when I was about ten- and, lonely girl, I didn’t have anyone to go sledging with, but went on my own anyway to Kensington Gardens near where I lived cos it had a steep slope.

I talked to a boy my age; he didn’t have any of the stand offishness of other children, and we sledged all afternoon.He had a tray and I had our old wooden toboggan. He’d come on his own too, all the way from Elephant and Castle.

‘Where’s that?’ I said.

‘Everyone knows the elephant’ he said, like I’d stepped out of a Wellsian time machine or something.

At the end of the day I wanted to ask him to my house for tea, but I had a feeling my mother wouldn’t like it.