There was a big fire yesterday morning in a derelict house around the corner from our flat. I went for a wander to buy some screws and noticed the commotion just after lunch.

The street was cordoned off, with fire engines, cranes and emergency scaffolders in attendance. The gutters were awash with dirty soot-flecked water, rushing down the storm-drain.

The downstairs windows of the house by the busy junction were usually boarded up and covered with posters advertising the latest Mos Def release and the new issue of The Face. Yesterday afternoon, they were blown out and charred and gaping, surprised. Looking up through three floors of dripping black timber, you could see the sky.

People stood and stared, watching the black wood silently steam and smoke in the afternoon sun, and the gentle, genial hubbub of emergency response units after an emergency is over. The smell of damp charcoal hung in the air, and a fireman stepped over the fluttering cordon to enjoy a sneaky fag.

On the periphery and in the shadows - in the doorway of a closed shop, just inside the station entrance, next to the bus stop on the corner - a handful of gaunt and yellowed men of indeterminate middle age watched the smoking shell silently, each clutching a can in one hand and a bag in the other. They were unshaved, unwashed, unkempt, and curiously unmoved.

As I passed one, I smelt musty clothes which had been slept in, old alcohol and the barest waft of fresh smoke and damp soot. He swigged from his can of Special Brew and looked on with a glassy, impenetrable stare.