The top end of Brixton is where Stockwell, with its Portuguese and Brasilian rhythms melts through the high density housing symptomatic of South London into the skate park and onto the main junction with Brixton Road ("the high street" in UK parlance).

At the junction sits a domed theatre - The Brixton Academy, with its neighbouring bar, a landmark for the Northern end of Brixton. The buses and pedestrians turn right into Brixton Road down the rain spattered pavements, past chemists and clothes shops at various stages of opening, closing, and disrepair.

Across the road is the big department store Morleys, our next landmark and a typical old single fronted shop which has somehow managed to maintain its identity as all else around went mainstream. The second floor is a chain coffee shop but above is a professionally painted mural pronouncing "Brixton, 80db and rizing". When we turn our eyes back to the left side of the road, we are at the Tube station with its steel frontage and glass lift. And its ever increasing supply of 'touts' who buy travel and Academy gig tickets and attempt to sell them on.

If you hadn't noticed the shift towards West Indian flavours then passing the Tube station you will smell the powerful incense burning from sticks being sold by a wizzened, West Indian guy who never says anything - but just rattles his tin suggestively. The accents of the cannibis sellers taking shelter in the bus stop are also a mixture of local and Caribbean. They are no problem, relaxed and chatty but not pushy.

We are shuffled into single file by the number of people thronged along the street even at this early hour. The market traders are unpacking their food and setting up their metallic frames in Pope's Road and Electric Avenue (the first street ever to have street lights, and a song by Eddy Grant).

It's 8.30am and the sound of chimes brings us looking across the road at our next landmark, Lambeth Town Hall, with its distinctive Victorian style and elegance and its clock faces, which show to Brixton Road and Brixton Hill. We cross over Coldharbour Lane - whose indoor markets, cafes and restaurants stretch down towards Camberwell - and past the Ritzy cinema, a centre of music and film to the top end of St. Matthews Peace Garden. We pass along the end of the garden, past the Budd family memorial and round the corner on to Brixton Hill.

The crowds have thinned out and it is not unusual to be alone as you walk the short distance through the first gate and onto Rush Common - the parkland which stretched unimpeded (secured by an 1880s law) along a buffer zone in front of this part of the hill. Down the asphalt path, past the fallen tree trunks, grass and blossom. The greenery dominates and the buses fade away into the distance as the path heads diagonally towards a children's play area and then round the corner to the masses of construction workers currently parked below.

Passing down the slope - away from the park, into the estate and round the corner (under the plastic sheeting) to the door for one of the handful of tower blocks. Opening the door, we head for the lift, which has been 'decorated' by local kids at some point in the recent past with graffiti, but nonetheless stays safe.

It is amazing to me the transformatory effect of the weather on an area. The snows of February 2009 were one of those occasions.  The snow fell over a long Sunday night and by midnight it had settled on Rush Common outside my flat.

Resurfacing at night for work, the snow lay thick and crunchy on the ground across the entire length of the park. Footing was solid, traction gained by the weight of compacted snow. Those passages of reduced weight of snow were gritted.

As the sole underground train line with no overground sections, the Victoria Line ran unimpeded from Brixton station, north. The station was open but the walk to there was punctuated by an eerily quiet evening devoid of human company. The trains were also sparsely populated.

The District Line was already operating on a shoestring when I arrived to make my connection, large sections of the service run through peripheral sections of London and overground. But a lineside fire at Westminster station put paid to any prospect of a successful connection and my journey was completed by taxi, through an astonishingly quiet section of the city of Westminster and over Westminster Bridge. The City of London is normally quiet at night, but to see its commercial counterpart so thoroughly empty of people was redolent of a scene from 28 Days Later. The taxi driver told me that his business was impaired by the complete lack of custom, even though the little custom available was scooped up in the absence of those taxi drivers who were also unable to reach their central bases on a night when bus services were suspended.