Set out on your government-approved once-daily walk. Go in the evening; fewer people present, less necessity for the awkward dance whereby you slip past one another on a narrow sidewalk, one of you spilling out into the road to keep that space, maintain that gap.

Paused construction works have left the Walk scattered with red and white barricades. They narrow the road, which – at any rate – is vacant of cars. When an ambulance approaches you see the flashes of blue for whole minutes before it passes you. The engine is the loudest, longest rumble.

A suitcase lies open in a door, bedding and plastic cups and clothing scattered in a pall around it. In another doorway a meal kit delivery has been plundered, ripped open, the contents disgorged. Signs are everywhere. They adorn shutters, are taped to boards. In one case a notice of closure is scrawled in pen directly onto a wall.

The quiet’s unnatural. One man, masked, stands in a doorway, rocks back and forth on his heels, gloved hands gripping the frame. Steam escapes around him – a takeaway kitchen. A Deliveroo rider cycles up, dismounts, waits at a distance, backpack ready and open.

Further up a woman sits hunched on a step, smoking. One couple walk arm in arm, slowly. You’re passed by a girl in shorts and a t-shirt, hair tangled, eyes wild, gripping a deflated football. At Elm Row bus drivers change over. Busses idle – so far ahead of schedule there’s nothing to do but wait.

The road narrows. The Omni is a ghostly aquarium, dark and cool inside. A black stone foot – recently reinstated – sits outside St Mary’s Cathedral. It looks heavy and certain. An artefact left behind, like all these construction barriers, cones, trenches. Like the cranes that stretch skywards from the half-finished mall.

Opposite this construction site, atop the grand old Balmoral hotel, the clock has stopped. The hands droop at six and four. In more ordinary times it would run, intentionally, three minutes fast. The reason given: to incentivise those on route to a train to hurry a little faster, and to give those parting an extra moment for goodbyes.