Just had one of those strange moments when you see something perfectly normal in a way which makes it seem a little alien, and you have a feeling that it belongs to somewhere else, and you are just peering through at it. Do you know what I mean? I think it happens a lot in cities, I guess because of all the lives running around each other, and over and through and under each other in the same small spaces. It’s something a lot of people have explored, from mad Gustav Meyrink in The Golem to lovely Neil Gaiman in Neverwhere.
But anyway – I was walking up Leytonstone High Road, past the church, and the Matalan and Shoeworld and the Petch Sayam thai restaurant. At night the whole street and all the buildings are sodium orange coloured because of the streetlights, and there are always people around. Tonight there were some people smoking outside the pub, and a woman on the phone at the bus stop, all lit up and noisy and busy. As I walked past the restaurant I turned and looked down the alley beside it, and it was as if I had casually glanced into some parallel world.
The noise faded suddenly as I turned my head away from the street, and the shadows in the alley looked dark inky blue, with moonlight pouring into the courtyard at the end of it. There was a black man standing with his back to me, in a pale t-shirt, obviously quite muscular, and he was holding a wooden broom and slowly twirling it around himself, around his back and over his head. Effortlessly, “like a ninja!” I thought, but it occurs to me now I have no idea if ninjas actually do this.
Anyhow, the moment left me with a strong impression of one of the lives running close beside mine, entirely different, and invisible to me. As soon as I was past the alley the shouting orange street came back to me with a rush and for a second I wondered if I should step back to see whether he had vanished.
We were in 
