Things are changing around this large market town. And no wonder, given the motorways that pass it on three sides and the high-speed railway running through it. So for once I’m not interested in the historic core of the place we’re visiting.

I thought that my friend would agree, but as soon as I suggested a brief visit he picked up the ball and ran with it. Now, a 30-minute pause has become two hours.

Clearly, it’s on account of the town’s sporting associations. Lots of interesting people may have spent their childhoods here. Among them a poet whose life was cut short, like that of so many of his generation, as well as a prime minister who died 25 years after the poet and is less fondly remembered. But all Friend wants is to get up close to a field that’s shielded by a range of school buildings. Not only that, he plans to take some of it home as a present for a sports-mad friend in northwest London.

Appeasement is out of the question. Not only is this a reckless and stupid idea, it’s time-wasting too. I want to see a new district taking shape on the town’s eastern edge, on the site of what was once a technological marvel and the largest of its kind in the world. So I broadcast my disapproval, loud and clear.

“I’m doing it anyway,” Friend says, turning away. “And if I should succeed, think only this of me: that there is some corner of this rugby field that forever is in Neasden.”