Hackney at certain epochs has given itself suburban airs and graces, before being slapped down and consigned once more to the dump bin of aborted ambition.

My father slapped my thighs with a variety of meats until I began to cry and sulked in the corner. I later became a musician.

There is a name for this sudden slap of art, this falling through the rabbit hole of civilisation. It’s Stendhal’s syndrome: being overcome by beauty. They say that the guards in the Uffizi are trained to deal with collapsing Americans who have lived lives of blameless comfort in Midwestern ugliness and can’t compute the full beam of a Bronzino

When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.