I live in a terraced flat with my partner. We are on the first floor. The back garden falls away, and down below is an area obscured by trees - a bit like a flat I used to live in. It's evening in summer - a warm night. I'm out on the fire escape when I notice the next-door neighbor is out in his back garden which is small and separated from ours by a wire fence. He is doing something right by our fence. When I go down I find he has extended his fence into our garden by a couple of feet just in one rectangular area right at the back, in order to capture a small underground stream that surfaces right there. "What do you think you're doing?" I demand, my blood rising. He is arrogant but charming, and manages to calm me down by saying that he will put it back. He said he just needed the water temporarily for his paper press. I'm not entirely convinced, but I go along with him. He says it's part of his business, and he'd be willing to take me down there to show me. I say ok, so he takes me through a gate in his garden through the trees, and in the moonlight we enter the back door of a large sprawling group of warehouse-type buildings which I had no idea were there. Inside I'm surprised to find this place is bustling with people - young media types who either hang around talking and laughing with cups of coffee, as if taking a break from doing something very creative and highly paid, or running around wearing headsets and holding clipboards as if they work in a tv studio. "Welcome to my studio" says my neighbor proudly, "follow me".. He takes me along various corridors - past various trendy people with clipboards - to a central room that looks like a recording studio with mixing desks, controls and monitors banked across the walls. There are a few people sitting around. The place is low-lit with mostly red light. A woman says "Want to see the filming?" She takes me down another corridor and through a window. I glimpse a courtyard with a cameraman at one end and young actors at the other dressed as medieval actors play-fighting with swords. There are also art studios here. Down another corridor are doors to several large studios. Through small windows in the doors I glimpse young sculptors and their mostly fibreglass/plastic creations. More fashionable people mill about. The men are mostly taller than me, the women attractive. There's an air of superiority amongst these people - which they may or may not be aware of. On the way out we pass a large printing room full of paper-making presses and printing machines - evidently what the water is for. "There's a large marketing department here" says a woman, "it's all driven by marketing". It all makes sense now. That's why I don't like this place despite the creative buzz. I'm pretty jealous and partly sickened by it. I leave on my own - I slip out when no one is looking. I come out in the early hours of the morning under an orange sodium street lamp, onto a curving leafy suburban street that I didn't notice on the way in. I must have come out on a different side of the building. A few yards down the road I recognize the trees at the end of my garden. I walk through into my neighbor's garden, and through his fence to mine. The fact that he has stolen a couple of square feet of my garden to further his creative empire has made me very angry. I return to my flat, which is small and bare. My partner is dealing with a crying baby, and wonders where I've been. I pour a glass of wine and begin the story, but she's too busy to listen right now.