It all depends on the time of day. Just around the corner from where I live there's an alleyway that leads down towards the station. On one side, at the top, is a short row of small houses. Opposite them, behind a fence of black railings, is a small green space with a few shrubs and a couple of large beech trees  - a third was chopped down a few years ago because its roots were allegedly upending one of the houses.

First thing in the morning, the only user of the green space is a neighbour who lives in the house opposite mine. He is large, black, deep-voiced and mostly cheerful. He wears a sweatshirt, jerkin and squashy hat, and apart from a friendly but muttered greeting says nothing because he is slowly going through his daily Tai Chi routine.

Later in the day another neighbour brings her dog for a swift crap (which she dutifully collects) before taking him for an extended gallop across the Heath in the afternoon.

In the afternoon a series of people bring a series of dogs (pit-bulls and alsations) and turn their backs pretending not to see the dogs' deposits. Then comes a pair of samoyeds who race up and down inside the railing while the two men who own them lean on the railings watching and smoking. When it was (briefly) summery, a woman came and gave the huge white creatures a haircut.

Further down the alleyway are two playgrounds. One is purely for toddlers - or so a notice pretends -  while the other is for, well, others. Parents - not only mothers - bring their toddlers mostly in the early afternoons for the baby swings, the little roundabout, the little slide. By late afternoon elderly adolescents have taken over, almost always male, and drop their empty boxes of KFC on the ground near the litter bin.

Years ago, when I first moved here, they were Afro-Carribeans who stayed until the early hours, exchanging drugs and making so much noise that one woman, whose garden backs onto the toddlers' playground, would shout her threats about calling the police every night. I dont know if she ever did call the police. There was so much police activity in the area anyway. Gradually, who knows why, the Afro-Carribean lads were replaced by Somalis who were friendly enough to offer to carry shopping but dropped more litter than anyone. Subsequently they disappeared into Camden Town where, it seems, they set about killing other Somalis from a rival gang.

At the bottom of the alleway are a couple more houses on one side and the back wall of a building on the other. This wall is peed against at regular intervals, in time and space; the puddles spread across the flagstones. The pee-ers are invariably white. Odd how these things pan out.

At night, after around nine, I take the longer route home.

Does this give the impression that I don't like living here? I love it.