I’m currently cat-sitting at the end of the Metropolitan Line, deep in John Betjamin’s Metro-land.

O Metro-land! Is all still pleasant in this Tory suburban eternal?

All early data points to no.

Amersham-on-the-Hill is where the old Metropolitan Railway now ends, an almost-place with a little mock-Tudor high street, two vainglorious kebab shops, and a smattering of interesting modernist churches.

It sits up from the old market town from which it gets its name – Amersham “proper”, with its 13th century church and old coaching inns which plied their trade before the railway and the motorway came.

In the daytime, Amersham is choked with cars larger than God, steered aggressively by wealthy boomers insulated from the world they have foisted upon us.

At night, these streets are ours.

4am, my old friend: insomnia again, as I blink at partially-destroyed lampposts swathed in emergency tape by the roundabout that leads to the ominously-titled Chilterns Lifestyle Centre. Is this code for some Guantanamo-style holding centre? Or just an indoor swimming pool?

In the pre-birdsong witching hour, I treat quietly, feeling the thrill of the mildly transgressive. Residential semis announce my approach with automatic security lights. Surveillance doorbell cameras watch and record my progress.

I hurry on towards the hedges and bollards that mark the entrance to a pedestrian alley – or, as it feels before the dawn: a portal to another world.

The last Metropolitan Line train was three hours ago already. A teenage couple, in hoodies and skater boy woolly hats, are making their way back from a party. Or perhaps there was no party. Perhaps they just wandered the streets for hours, in the dark, just because they can. Either way, they have run out of things to say to each other. They part, without touch and without ceremony, by the double-roundabout that marks the beginning of the high street.

The air is cool as I walk down the middle of the road, familiar coffee shop franchises and an oddly patriotic dry cleaner competing for my attention in the artificially lit darkness.

The eyes of the remaining skater – this must be his route home – are burning their way into the back of my neck. I must seem strange, particularly as I’m taking photographs of ordinariness, like some lost Russian spy all out of excuses and polonium.

The high street has a Waitrose AND a Marks & Spencer, and there is Union Jack bunting everywhere. This isn’t celebrating anything in particular. It’s to signify that – here, at least – England abides. And in the autumn, there will be poppies.

It’s time to head back to my borrowed cat, and perhaps snatch a few more hours’ sleep. Tomorrow, I will make it to the old town, and – perhaps – the museum. It’s time to explore Betjamin’s ghost a little more thoroughly.