The cold creeps, worms its way to the bone under the epidermis, leaving your face like Cleopatra’s stone. We no longer huddle under the arch at Waterloo, evicted by Council concrete – boarded up, but gather blankets under the Royal Festival Hall to the odour of culture vultures’ binned fish and mash. How was your show tonight? Philharmonic or perhaps the Blues? Have you seen my view? Un-ticketed waters, moon glittering like streaks of minnow and how’s this for entertainment – the roller-skaters tricks on dry-ice skates not like in my day of fluorescent four-wheels. Come sit awhile. Stay long enough, you’ll forget the soot -stained stucco, fag-butts dropped in the gutter (leave me a length on the stub – collect them to trade or smoke), the city clogged under your nails. You’ll become the city – the sea of Starbucks thinks you already are, tossing coppers and twenty P’s, purchasing postcards ‘Bag lady under Bridge’ in grainy black and white, their Adidas chic kicking dust in your eye. Come winter, conscience is strained through a rose shade of busy, banking and gym membership as under that crown of thorns The London Eye . . . we die.