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Then there is the similarly trifling instance of "Brixton Town Square", funded jointly by Brixton Challenge and Lambeth Council, with the assistance of English Heritage. A piece of derelict land has been turfed over (always in England the response to any urban space). It now sits vacuous and unvisited surrounded by wire netting. I suspect I know where this comes from; someone in Lambeth Council had a vision of Jamaican colour and bustle, (an ENO production of Porgy and Bess? An inept 'folk' market scene daub bought one holiday in Kingston?) This was to be a meeting place for 'the people' (rather than people; crucial distinction)

Why is this place doomed? Why will it for ever remain inauthentic? Because it already exists. It exists outside Brixton Underground station two hundred yards away; as anyone knows this is one of the busiest, craziest places in London. On Saturdays I have seen, (in the robes and breastplates of imagined tribes of Israel) ranting preachers denouncing sodomy and vilifying whole races and nationalities. The local dossers dance drunkenly clutching cans of Special Brew, the South Korean girl missionaries in their plum-coloured lip gloss, shimmy sexily to the sound of tambourines; and the king of the loonies sets himself up a recliner to sunbathe on the traffic island in the middle of Brixton Road while the same old lady blows through a comb and lavatory paper and the incense men waves his incense and the " big-big-biggie man" sells the Big Issue. Then there is the apocalyptic ranter whose incessant message is that we will all roast in hell. I watched him once surrounded by mocking kids: he didn't miss a beat:

"For He died, for the....('ere you're just bloody kids…you know nuffin' right?)…for the remission of your sins".

It all happens in and around Brixton Tube station. I have found myself part of it, being beaten up in the ticket concourse (in front of about fifty amused onlookers) by an enraged lover swinging her handbag who had laid in wait for me. A few weeks ago I was forced against a bus shelter, on a Saturday morning, in mid-crowd, by a crack addict fizzing with anger.

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