And there's something about Harringay...

There's something special about Harringay and I experienced it again this evening, walking home on foot after an accident along the Parade.

The traffic had been diverted and "the village" had revealed itself, like a North London Brigadoon.

'Not again,' I said to the Turkish girl at the cordon who, though sporting a Met jacket, was clearly no cop.

'Yeah,' she said brightly, 'but at least it's not a murder or a stabbing. Why not try the Passage?'

So I clomped along the Passage which connects the streets on "the ladder", thinking on the humid quiet and the half-dark, the Harringay in Haringey. A pair of Somali girls heard the slam of my size eleven's and broke into a run.

'It's okay,' I called out, 'I'm not Doctor Who!' Look, I don't know why I said that, but they laughed anyway, laughed all the way down the street.