The peaceful scenes in these postcards have vanished definitively - not in the past 90 years

The peaceful scenes in these postcards have vanished definitively - not in the past 90 years, but in the last four. The new destruction and division of Bosnia means that a real peace will be difficult to achieve. Many Bosnians believe that this is a poisoned peace - history suggests that a country divided by force merely provides the basis for further conflict in the future Now, these postcards are indeed from another age !. THE CITY of London in the small hours is no place to be. Yet again, last week, I found myself wandering aimlessly around, worrying.

I worried about why I am wandering aimlessly around the City, worrying; but, more than that, I worried that I am growing more stupid with every year that passes That, for example, is a very stupid remark. What I should do is give the impression of increasing maturity, of ever-growing wisdom, of the certainty born of life's experience But I cannot do it It would be simply untrue. I know nothing and understand far less than I did when I was 20, and, to be honest, it's a bit of a bugger. Take, for example, the City. In the middle of the night, thin mist drifting on a small, bitter wind, it exercises a terrible, inchoate melancholy; always did. But when I was 20, I thought - I knew - that as I grew older, the source of that melancholy would reveal itself I knew I would understand why I knew I would be right. And I knew I would be able to explain it.All that happened was that the prospect of understanding receded.

TS Eliot's "objective correlative", from being a mere literary device, became a way of life. I can no longer assign cause and effect to my moods and irrational responses; all I can do is recite to myself the sequence of observations which led me there. The insane babbling narrative continues, and I am become like an aboriginal, walking through my foggy concrete Outback, singing the world into existence: a splash of lamplight, a burglar alarm howling foolishly; flat and supercilious bank facades, preposterous plastic road-blocks, a glum copper hiding in a doorway; a wrought-iron link-holder outside a merchant's house, offices now; fish-ghosts at the old Billingsgate market.And what does this all add up to? Nothing more than a sense of dislocation, of connections broken and diversity expunged. Nobody lives here any more, in the City; nobody is born; nobody dies, except of a sudden heart-attack across the desk (soon re-allocated, the corpse shipped out in an undertaker's van to East Grinstead and oblivion).