The oddest thing just happened. Lyn and I were just out for a walk. It is a bright, crisp, early spring day here, and we were out enjoying the sun. L was being pushed by dom, and they were leading the way through the small wooded park very near our house. I must have gone through that park at least five hundred times by now; it’s the last fragment of an ancient forrest which, I’m told, used to cover the entire area. Today, though, at a turning we I’d ordinarily go right, Lyn lead us straight on, down a path where I had assumed there were steps.

I suddenly had the most uncanny feeling. After five years living in Charlton, I feel I have come to know the area rather well. And yet, all of a sudden, within just a few metres of home, I had no idea where I was. It was quiet and serene, and felt as if we’d entered one of the secret places of the world. The sound of traffic faded as we followed the path past the animal enclosures and out of the park onto a road I had never seen before.

I was astounded. I felt lost, yet I knew we were still in Charlton, not far at all from home. How could I have missed this place, which felt more like a back street in a cheshire town than part of a sprawling metropolis? I told myself that I needed to explore more thoroughly.

On we went. And suddenly we were back on the main road to Woolwich, a road I know well; and I knew where I was. Yet I still felt amazed at what had just happened, as if we had stumbled briefly into another world and back again, so near to home yet so unknown, new and foreign.