It’s odd – and revealing – that 62 years after leaving the north London flat where I was brought up, I still think of it as home. I can still remember the telephone number: Pinner 1826.
I can walk round the flat in my mind, running my hand over the “distemper” on the lavatory wall, Paris wallpaper on another. I can hear the “geyser” spluttering hot water into the bath, smell the dying cat on my bed with its red “hospital” blanket, see the man peeing on the moon on an inn sign, in Bruegel’s painting, Netherlandish Proverbs, on our front-room wall.
