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Up and down the road over a decade and a half I have watched them all. There was the karate chop man, a deranged African plagued by imaginary assailants; you kept well clear of him. For a whole summer a bearded Dostoyevskian figure in a long dark overcoat used to pray with fervour in the gutter, eyes baroquely upcast. He once came into the Hope and Anchor, flung himself to his knees on the swirly polyester carpet and prayed fervantly there too, as the punters with their dry roasted peanuts and pints of lager drank stolidly on.

Here comes the guy who walks the streets (in summer too) his head encased in an anti-radiation helmet. Down the road pedals a longhaired balding man in a miniskirt and kitten heels. You avert your eyes for this is another pair of thighs you can do without. And here is Alfie, Town Crier of Brixton, in full eighteenth century town crier fig, on a moped with a special tricorne hat designed to accommodate his crash helmet. Sometimes he is in the pub drinking a half with his towncrier's bell by his side. I have seen him toll his bell to prelude each pub quiz answer, a peal for each item. "Num-bah....Five-ah.. The goddess of wisdom was......Athen-ah." (clang clang) "Numb-ah...Six-ah..." "Fackin' 'ell" says a man at my table "I've only gone and put fackin' Hebe!" Ask Alfie to show you his cuttings; he has travelled the world in his town crier capacity; flaking articles testify to the visit of "el tradicional pregonero del concejo di Lambet (sic) a Londres, Alfi (sic)…" Last week my eye glossed over the headline: "Town Crier Hit By Crossbow Bolt" Just another Town Crier and Crossbow Bolt story I thought; but I suddenly realise it is about Alfie. I meet him the next day outside Brixton Tube, in full town crier outfit. He tells me he reckons the bolt was fired from somewhere near Electric Avenue.

I could go on; so could you of your own street; but enough, lest you think I was trying to evoke a cuddly characterful, "tight-knit" community; Sesame Street perhaps; or the Hudson Street of Jane Jacobs' Life and Death of American Cities of 1961. Jacobs, writing mainly about New York, was commendably anti-suburban, anti-Garden City; she wanted to keep urban density at a time when the trend was to loosen the urban fabric; but coming as she did from a smaller town she still cherished the idea of the warmth and complicity of small town community. Her 'picture', rather reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's illustrations of Middle American life. is a cosy one:

"people stopping by at the bar for a beer, getting advice from the grocer and giving advice to the newsstand man, comparing opinions with other customers at the bakery and nodding hello to the two young boys drinking pop on the stoop, eyeing the girls while waiting to be called for dinner, admonishing the children, hearing about a job from the hardware man and borrowing a dollar from the druggist"…etc

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