The day’s graft is done, but the sun has already surrendered to the night. With bread and sausage tucked away for supper, you navigate the darkening veins of Camden Town. When the light fails, the city’s most grotesque shadows crawl from the alleys. A right bloody nuisance. You quicken your step.

Clutching your bag, you pull your hat tight against your head as a cold, miserable rain begins to fall.

Just as you think the day has hit rock bottom, a great, tawny mass erupts from the gloom. Driven by a frantic, beastly greed for the meat in your bag, the creature strikes like a landslide. You land hard in the muck, your new dress surrendered to the filth of the street. Then, a gravelly voice barks out of the fog:

“’Ush, no! Cyril! Bloody ’ell, mate, you cannot go doin’ that! You’ve gone and knocked the poor lady clean into the bloody orbit of the earth, ’aven’t ya? You oversized hairy pillock! Get back ’ere!”