OK, we’ve had the BoHo summer of gypsy skirts, big belts and bumfreezer jackets; so what’s next? The ticker tape machines are running red hot in Vintage Clothing Land as we try to predict the future in terms of the past. Boots and bags are still massive, obviously. Biba colours are holding steady, pearls are hanging in there, and the Russian thing may happen if there’s snow by Christmas. We could call it SnoBoHo…

I’m filling out a survey – we’re awash with surveys – about Public Realm Improvement and Business Regeneration. Hackney Council’s Regeneration and Social Inclusion Scrutiny Commission will be scrutinising Church Street and would like to include our views before ignoring them. I’ve ticked boxes for improved pedestrian access, streamlined public transport, better benches for the homeless, wider roads and pavements, and more green spaces. Where we’re going to find all these on Church Street is not yet - clear. Perhaps an In-depth Focus Group might lead to a further survey?

Ken bluntly ignored the findings of his latest survey about the Exclusion Zone. He said he knew all along that most people were against it, but the survey was not a pointless charade: there was a vast pool of untapped sociologists who would all vote for him if only he could give them enough surveys. Here’s another one. About lumps in the road, with descriptions and diagrams of the various lumps you can vote for, and the different ways of narrowing roads.

The mouth of Dunsmure Rd has been narrowed to make it safer for pedestrians, but what it actually does is increase the pressure. The lights go green for five seconds in every ninety. Which is just enough for a Volvo to wake up and lurch across on the amber, followed by a string of wild-eyed, horn-hooting desperados who will let nothing stand in the way between them and the A10 Corridor (Stamford Hill to you and me.) And woe betide any pedestrian who has been fooled by the Enhanced Pavement Profile into thinking that this is not a real road anymore.

A taxi driver apparently told a friend of a friend of mine that he had Mr Speedbump Hackney in the back of his cab, who boasted that wherever he waved his wand a speed bump would appear. (A few months later, naturally.) They cost four thousand quid each… Hold on, that can’t be right, can it?

Yes, of course it can: a hundred quid’s worth of tarmac, nine hundred to Murphy and three thousand quid’s worth of paperwork. Pete the Skate who buys our biker gear is outraged that we’re dumping all this asphalt in the middle of the road when we could be building skateboard ramps. He’s been campaigning for a skateboard park for ages – perhaps in the corner of Clissold Park that’s on permanent hire to circuses and overpriced funfairs? Naturally, he’s got nowhere, so he’s gone off to start one in West London instead.

Our kids take their skateboards all the way to Bow. If you own a fourteen-year old in N16 you’ve probably got problems. There’s nowhere for them to go that doesn’t cost a load of money, and vital parts of their brain are missing. (All you young mums racing buggies round the Spence, be warned; it happens faster than you think. No sooner have you moved to the right catchment area than the boys are hanging out outside the Chicken Shop learning to swear and spit on the ground, and the girls are crowded into our changing room going ‘Omigod, that is so-o-o slutty! My mum’s gonna die when she sees me in this!!’) There’s no sixth form in the whole of Hackney, so if they do need to learn to read or write you’ll have to start thinking about Camden Girls, or moving on to Muswell Hill.

What we need round here is a Youth Club. (Apart from a cinema, a theatre, a sports centre and a decent dancehall, of course.) The wife’s father’s knocking on ninety now and he can’t remember little details like his name anymore, but what he can do is play ping pong like a demon. Nimble as a mountain goat, his arms a blur of motion, the light of battle in his pebble lenses – it’s what keeps him together. He learned as a teenager at the local youth club and it’s stood him in good stead for 75 years. Round here a game of table tennis used to cost £7 an hour at the Sports Centre, and even that’s closed down now. If they could afford a Youth Club oop North in 1930 where people wore clogs and worked down the mines 20 hours a day, why can’t we manage one now in N16?