Storm clouds gravid with snow mobbed a sickly sky, tainting the jaundiced daylight a death-bed sepia. I trudged to my next job through the detritus from the last snow fall, virginal purity violated without so much as a proposal to show for it. As I was nursing a particularly vicious hang-over, I felt pretty ravaged myself. The address I’d been given was in the Grange, Edinburgh’s most exclusive post code. It was only half an hours walk from my flat in Bruntsfield, but in terms of the aspirations of a worker ant like me, it was like a mouse pining for a castle on the moon. My blinding headache jarred every step of the way turning the short journey into an epic worthy of Homer never mind NASA. When I finally lurched into the right street I was greeted by the first line of defence of the rich: the seemingly endless vista of anonymous tree lined street; the second being the high stone walls, over which nothing was visible, presumably to discourage the crass curiosity of those vulgar enough to be less fortunate.

If I had known then what I know now, I’d have told my erstwhile employers exactly where to stick their sicko ‘requirements’. Maybe they, along with half the street, would still be alive now…