Homeless vintage fashions welcomed

Admittedly, this is a standard feature of life for most students, the combined effort of binge drinking statistics in the Daily Mail and phone calls that consist entirely of people shouting "don't put the chinchilla in the toaster, Steve" while you ask after granny's new patio. But for the most part they only have to worry about liver failure, exam failure and your failure to recognise that handing over your entire loan to the happy sunshine cult who give out free lollipops in the precinct isn't the wisest way to ensure personal contentment. By and large, they can rest assured that you won't be involved in anything that comes up on BBC News 24. Meanwhile, my parents have to deal with all of the above (though thus far I've shunned the happy sunshine cult in favour of blowing my loan on organic quiches and cloche hats from Portobello market). Plus the fact that of all the Big Bad Scary Things that occur in the country, the vast majority happen in London and not Loughborough. If there's a terrorist attack, gangland shoot-out or fatal mass stampede at a Primark store opening, I've probably unwittingly wandered into it. So when the enormous fire started ravaging Camden market last weekend, the first I knew of it was my mother at the other end of my mobile shrieking "Oh, good, you're alive" '“ a greeting I'm tempted to ask her to use every time she calls, just to affirm my self-worth and remind me that though I may have no job, no money and no idea whatsoever how Chaucer depicted the Wife of Bath as an early model for feminism (2,000-4,000 words), things could be a darn sight worse. But yes, Camden was on fire. For a while it was distressing and secretly exciting in equal measures, like when someone close to you incurs a dramatic but ultimately not-going-to-kill-them injury, breaking an arm, say, and you get to go in the ambulance and miss school and feel like the centre of something important for a few hours. On hearing celeb pub du jour the Hawley Arms was ablaze, my friend Hannah became genuinely panicked over the potential demise of Amy Winehouse, worry that was only exacerbated when I pointed out that the combined effect of hairspray and flammable intoxicants would make the woman human kindling, like a big Swan Vesta match in lipstick. Friends who had grown up in the city were in varying stages of grief as their teenage memories went up in hemp-scented smoke. Every adolescent in London is legally obligated to spend at least 85 per cent of their time congregating in Camden. To introduce some local perspective, it's how it would be in Worthing if the bandstand in the town centre and that bit of pavement outside Beales and McDonald's both burnt down. Meanwhile, my thoughts were with all the beautiful frocks I hadn't bought. Suddenly, their imminent destruction put everything in a fresh perspective. Choosing to keep myself housed and fed and educated seemed selfish and wrong when instead I could have picked the noble route of giving a home to hundreds of orphaned 50s taffeta cocktail dresses while I still had the chance. The evening started to display the makings of a classic "remember where you were when" situation, everyone sitting round and shaking their heads and making emergency cups of tea. In an effort to make sure the moment was forever cemented in our collective memory, I introduced dessert into the mix. A big fire is one thing, but "The night Camden burnt down and then we had chocolate sponge pudding" is the kind of fond memory we will preserve to tell our grandchildren. Of course, the whole thing actually turned out to be a huge, happy anticlimax. The frocks were fine, Winehouse was fine (well, not burnt) and the only big damage was to the famously rubbish canal market. Which is tragic for those who like to spend their weekends being pickpocketed while they buy cannabis-flavoured lollies and t-shirts that say "The voices in my head think you're not normal". But for the rest of the world, Camden lives on relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, the same probably can't be said for Steve's toasted chinchilla.