Fuck, I love the smell of Barnes Common as I ride through it at night in the early summer, just after a drop or two of rain. Mark Bolan's ghost must be confused by the mini-roundabout that's arrived, 26 years too late, to slow down traffice before the anonymous but lethal humpback bridge.

Living near greenery is one of the joys of the roundly-ignored Southwest London. It's not in the least bit fashionable around here (Putney is considered by the hipsterati as acceptable but hardly cool, and everywhere else is just laughed off as bourgeois country, not incorrectly), but it's easily the greenest quarter of London, and not just the stockbroker belt. I've got Barnes Common, Putney Common, Putney Heath, Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common within a mile or so of me. Stick that up your arse, Clerkenwell/Islington/Shoreditch...