Living in London makes one susceptible and immune to odd behaviour. It is the gift of the Londoner to be free from commonplace concerns and shudder not at freakish and otherwise eye-watering sights on a daily basis, such as the African-American woman standing on the corner shooting “all the white people” with her fingers, wearing pink hot pants and a kagool covered in stains that may well be ketchup but are probably blood; or the pensioner who dons a Stetson and mismatching espadrilles and a breath that could create chemical warfare whilst leaning against you as he number-ones it up the poster for Scientology and you do a slo-mo Riverdance so as not to get steaming wee on your Mary-Janes; or the woman eating cat food in the foyer of the leisure centre; or the teenager with zombie contact lenses who chooses lucky you to stare at all the way up the Victoria line as he holds hands with his sixty year old girlfriend wearing a gimp mask. All these things are as normal to the Londoner as the sound of sirens in 1940. Disdain is removed because all you want to do is get to your destination and these oddities are mere obstacles, and you are Randall Wayne in your own zombie apocalypse. Indeed, any sign of anxiety, i.e. those that bump into you or walk too slow down the escalators are deemed unworthy demons of the state and should be made punishable by death and you might as well give them a little shove so they tumble like dominoes and you can get home three minutes early. Your default walking pace is akin to that of having shit yourself in Mayfair and searching for the nearest public loo, or being chased by a boss-eyed Texan clutching a chainsaw or a Christian Aid clipboard. All this combined with the level of insouciance and self-importance as Kim Jong-un, whereby it seems seminal to the universe that your foot should be the first to step into the tangled mosh pit of Oxford Circus, and bathing your wounded elbows in Oilatum is a nightly ritual.

So, why is it that when it rains in London everyone reacts as if there has been a terrorist attack? The journey home the other night was nigh on catastrophic and took almost three times as long as normal – and we’re talking a bus journey here which on any normal day is akin to taking a tour around Australia in an electric wheelchair. People huddled to each other in puddled sculptures – a wet and weary mass of tortuous umbrellas, sloppy satchels, sodden sleeves, crumpled paper bags and mobiles elbowed up and out striking desperate calls to loved ones not sure if they’ll ever see them again and no, they certainly won’t be able to pop into Co Op to get some cheesestrings for Tommy. Women rendered hard and vulnerable all at once, mascara smudged as if they’ve been crying over the dead body of Sandra, the Office Manager, with a look of vengeance in their eyes. Pensioners clinging to lamp posts and a Polish man with the body of Cyclops standing rooted, arms folded as if he is immune to the punishment of the Gods despite people hurtling into him like giddy rhinos. I found myself joining them and tearing through the crowds to take shelter in a doorway to avoid the falling debris. And then it hit me – what the fuck are we all doing? This is not a typhoon, our houses will still be standing and the route for the 185 will not be flooded with crocodiles. We will not form webbed feet and take to wading. Everything is unchanged, so why the mass hysteria? Maybe everyone is so regularly catatonic that one chink in the armour renders us primeval and all evolution is dissolved as quick as you can scream, “Run!” or “Rbdjfbsdjf sjf j” as our ancestors would have said. If it starts to hail, God forbid, maybe the government could start issuing Exosuits before people crawl into A&E with chunks of bloodied flesh missing from all the icy boulders…