The city soundscape has changed. The seagulls that cried outside our window every morning have gone back to sea – closed fish restaurants and tidy dustbins don’t yield rich pickings. The sky is empty of planes and we no longer have to strain our ears to hear the yellow tit who lives on our terrace. His song replaces the clank of cranes and accompanies the sound of the pot plants outside tapping on the glass behind the blinds.

This morning there is news from the Outside World!! And, even more extraordinarily, news that is not about Covid-19!!

A text arrives showing a newspaper front page, featuring the photograph of a man whom I met only recently and only once – and under the strangest of circumstances. A friend who lives in a block of apartments not far from ours, was being woken every Friday, Saturday and Sunday by frantic ringing on her front door bell at three or four o’clock in the morning. Certain that no-one she knew would be calling on her at that time, she, nevertheless, felt obliged to look at the camera showing the street outside. It was no-one she knew and she told the indistinct men they must be ringing the wrong bell. They told her the number they wanted and she told them it wasn’t hers. Months into this torture and at the end of her tether, she begged me to come up and confront her neighbour to tell him that whoever was calling at these ridiculous hours must be warned off.

We stand outside his apartment in amazement. There are five security locks on the front door, a network of cameras attached to the ceiling, pointing both backwards at us and forwards at the doorway and what sounds like an Alsatian dog hurling itself at the closed door and, for all we know, about to chew its way through the wood. Somewhat gingerly, we press the button on a keypad that could have doubled as an aircraft cockpit – and wait. There is no answer. We wait. Still no answer. We wait. The door opens a crack and a man of six foot five or six, with the build of a shot-putter, stands blocking the snarling dog’s path to us with his foot, on which is a black leather, studded boot , extending up over the knee of his black jeans almost to his crotch. On his head is a black leather peaked cap, from his pocket dangles a jingling mass of silver chains and over his black, ripped, T-shirt he wears a black leather trench coat, grazing the floor – and I could swear – billowing out behind him. We step back slightly. He raises his hand above his head. We step back further. He leans his arm on the door jamb, revealing a tasteful full – sleeve tattoo of what appears to be knives and guns. “Would you mind asking the people who ring my bell instead of yours in the middle of the night, to stop?,” asks my friend in a voice slightly higher than usual. ” Oh, I’m SO, SO sorry, I must apologise, I receive lots of packages from The States, hence the poor timing. I’m really, really sorry. I wouldn’t have disturbed you for the world. Please accept my deepest apologies”. He bows low and closes the door, shoving the dog back into the apartment with his foot.

I admit it was something of an anti-climax.

His face, staring out from the paper today, is immediately recognisable. The “packages” arriving at odd hours of the night, turn out to have been punters booking in for “Extreme Bondage Chemsex” sessions, with Class A drugs as a side order to spice up the “meth-fuelled orgies”. As he is led away by several Police Officers, to begin his 6-year sentence, my friend and I almost feel sorry to see such a charmingly polite neighbour leave the building.