• AFTER a day at the beach I return home, relaxed, back to the humid London night and the city lights of King’s Cross.

Two hours earlier I had my feet in the sea with seaweed swirling around and dead crabs that had washed up on the beach – now I am back in the polluted heart of the city with the clock face of St Pancras a luminous gold like an old moon. Home.

Then I walk past a young black man sitting cross-legged in a doorway on Pancras Road with a quilt around him, very still and withdrawn, closed in on himself. He looks like a refugee, traumatised.

He’s not asking for money or making any eye contact and I walk past, as you do sometimes, feet moving forward while heart is saying go back. I should have gone back, given him money, if nothing else.

A few doors down I pass another young man, white this time, sprawled on his side, asleep on the pavement (asleep? dead?) with a tiny tan dog curled into his middle. There is an outsize pizza box with half-eaten crusts on the floor next to him.

The bin between him and the bus stop is overflowing. It’s all over the pavement. Plastic bottles (16 million a day we fail to recycle – a day!), fast food containers, papers. Some people are trying, they keep adding rubbish, but the bin’s overflowing. Throw it away – away where?

Camden Council’s new office block – Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method sustainable design rating of “outstanding” – is lit up, at 10.30pm on a Sunday. What happened to saving money and energy? Sustainable? Let the floods rise. It’s all disposable.

Up to Camden High Street, another five bodies lying in doorways. A glass left on the pavement, someone threw that away. I pick up the glass but I can’t help the rough sleepers. This life is killing them and it’s brutalising us as this becomes “normal”.

I am so angry and so impotent. Why are these men sleeping on the street?

The bankers’ pay goes up and up, the internet titans have moved into King’s Cross, making huge profits, the MPs were awarded a 10 per cent pay rise.

Grenfell Tower burned and Theresa May’s magic money tree came up with £1billion for the Democratic Unionist Party to prop up a Tory government.

A cold, clear, fury is filling me. Never mind the meditation and the acceptance, and forgiveness, even the tears. This is a time to be angry – very angry. As John Lydon said, anger is an energy.

If I had Boris Johnson or David Cameron or George Osborne or any of the spoilt, dangerous Bullingdon boys here, it would take all my strength not to grab them and yell at them “Look at this” and shake them hard. Better control myself and focus.

We should be angry. It’s time for change. I keep hearing people from all walks of life saying we need a revolution. Whatever it means we need to make it happen. Enough.

‘EVE LONDON’
Camden, name and address supplied