My office is on the thirteenth floor, and has picture windows all the way around, so that – with the exception of a small part of the northwest corner which is blocked off by a similarly-sized building next door – we have a 360º view of London. And what we don’t have is a clock, so whenever I’m not at my PC and want to know the time, I have to look down Victoria Street to Big Ben (or St. Stephen’s clock, or whatever it’s really called). Which is great: using Big Ben as your office clock is like keeping your jewellery in the Tower of London, or getting your groceries from Harrods.

All of which reminds me that when I lived on Tooley Street we used to refer to the mini-supermarket on Shad Thames as “Harrods”, because its wares were similarly ambitiously priced. In fact, I’m fairly sure you could buy the constituents for a meal more cheaply at the real Harrods than you could have done at this place, whose name I have conveniently forgotten. Still, I’d undergo worse hardship than that to live on Shad Thames.