The 20th century was at its fag end when I, eight months pregnant, moved into Redfern. Now, the child has gone to uni and I too am leaving the hood – although not before it, in a sense, left me. In 19 years, virtually all of old Redfern – the Block, the boarding-houses, the bums – has succumbed to a tsunami of smashed avocado and man-buns. This farewell, then, is part au revoir, part elegy.

Naturally, we upended the rule; best house, worst street. Nightly, back then, our back lane leapt with flames. A heroin dynasty controlled all traffic, their two terraces, opposite each other, festooned with razor wire and CCTV as a sort of checkpoint. Flogging heroin to a constant drift of hooded ne'er-do-wells from a caravan permanently parked in the No Stopping, they hurled abuse at anyone they suspected of middle-class values, intimidated police with name-specific graffiti up and down the lane and regularly made bonfires on the asphalt. Hence the flames.

Illustration: Simon Bosch

What were they burning? Furniture, maybe. No one knew. No one went there. The demographic was already a mix of old-timers and blow-ins but, like the blind and benighted in Plato's cave, we worked on shadowy supposition. The main community response to this intimate intimidation was to meet regularly with the local constabulary, demanding help while also insinuating that the cops were "in on it".

Eventually someone was killed, a homeless man they said. The police moved in: towed the caravan, raided one house, repossessed the other, jailed the dudes and generally cleaned up.