In the block where I live, which includes sixty flats spread out over five floors around a central courtyard that admits no vehicles, there are few children. It is as if they cannot prosper here. This is a block of singletons, couples and members of the LGBT+ community. I realized this when I saw a boy playing in the courtyard. I have seen him a few times at weekends with his father. I imagine him a divorced fatherr who receives the child one weekend in two. This does not count. Four days a month is not enough for the poisonous breezes to contaminate the child. There is also a crying infant two floors above us. This is no baby but a toddler, still blaring out its pain through the night, the night fears of Strangemont house beginning to curdle its blood. No, the only flourishing child in Strangemont House is the daughter of a Polish couple whom you see departing and returning in her school uniform every day. She is regular as clockwork and could indeed be an automated child wound up or somehow regulated every morning. This is the only child in Strangemont House and she has somehow evaded the sulphuric fumes that would contaminate a normal child. Now perhaps you see why I like the place.

http://www.peoplearerubbish.com