I don’t live in the city. I grew up there but I moved when I could to a town not too far from a regional train station, but still far enough removed to not see any neighbours from my kitchen window. I revel in this, in the quiet. In our overcrowding world, it’s a luxury.

I commute to work, to the university, and I live the city in these trips, just like I did when I was younger. I live the congestion, the damp heat on crowded trams, the muffled skies, the brisk looking-through one another, the sometimes startling exchange. When I return home after hours of travel, I open the car door and step out into a blank night, dark, with those millions of pinpricked stars making milk stains in the sky. It’s always hotter or colder in the country. It’s never the same once you’re over the Great Divide.