Late in 2020, under semi-lockdown conditions, I viewed an empty flat in the Seven Dials enclave of Covent Garden, a stone’s throw east of Soho. There was no life in the chilly cobbled street. But something told me instantly I had found my next home. ‘This is it,’ I said to the estate agent. ‘How much do I need to offer?’ He raised his eyebrows above his Covid mask. ‘Slow down. You’d spend more time than that buying a new pair of shoes.’ 

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But my mind was made up and I never for a moment regretted the decision. Not least because in a push to revive the moribund West End hospitality trade a few months later, the councils of Camden (of which my flat is at the southern tip) and Westminster, which includes Soho, licenced restaurants and cafés to colonise the pavements in front of their premises — and in some cases the roadways as well. By the summer of 2021, pedestrianised parts of Soho had taken on the ambience of Barcelona. 

In my own street, residents’ parking was replaced by tables and benches for a cooked food market and a cocktail bar. An impenetrable one-way system killed almost all traffic after the early-morning delivery trucks and before the boombox-blaring pedicabs which besiege ‘Matilda’ audiences coming out of the Cambridge Theatre. This year, our cobbles have been re-set and the tables have been enhanced with Aperol-sponsored parasols. The only pavement obstacle that bothers me is a crush........

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