Sirens and breaking glass, even in 'safe' Chalk Farm

You don't expect it, not in an area estate agents would describe as Primrose Hill borders. But last night the wave of unrest that crashed over London reached us too. Just after 10pm, as we chatted over a glass of wine in our patio garden in Chalk Farm, we could hear the shouts, the sirens and that frightening, critical mass of belligerence that indicated that this was not just rowdies exiting the Barfly rock venue a few doors down from us, and not the end of the party at the Roundhouse celebrating Ron Arad's new installation.

I have been in Bangkok when the clashes between the red and yellow- shirted protestors were at their height, and recently returned with my wife and one-year-old son from Kuala Lumpur, from where images of riot police tear-gassing demonstrators recently went around the world. But this felt far more immediate, and far more threatening. North London has been my home ever since university, an area in which I have spent my twenties and thirties. It has always been mixed - bricked estates sit next to expansive Victorian terraces, while the dress sense and alarming tattoos of the denizens of Camden market have often intrigued visitors from out of London, who imagined we lived on some kind of "front line". No, not really, we would reply, amused.

Last night it felt different. As the cries and the echoes of breaking glass came ever closer our flat appeared slim shelter. Was the door to the road properly closed? Had a visitor to our shared house carelessly left it open, raising the prospect that the anger that had taken over the streets could spill into our own home? We double- locked front and back, huddled inside and hoped the scenes of devastation we had seen on news reports about Tottenham were not about to be visited on us too.

This morning the results were plain to see. The Sainsbury's Local and Evans' Cycles both had parts of their frontages smashed in, broken bottles and liquid on the floor of the former and mangled bikes in front of the latter. About 20 bikes had been stolen, others ruined beyond repair, I was told, and the tills, naturally, had gone too.

A neighbour who was brave enough to venture outside last night told us he had seen a gang of 15 or so youths suddenly swell to around 100, confronted by police trying to force them back down the road. We had heard the ebb and flow of their skirmishes, the barks of the Met's dogs and the roars of those lusting to do damage with the bottles they had looted from bin bags and broken to cause blood to flow.

And what for? What did this destruction serve, what could possibly be gained from this rage? A few years ago I stood in the huge open space of the Roundhouse across the road from us with Torquil Norman, the benefactor whose aim was to provide purpose for the young people he saw desultorily hanging around in Camden.

I hope none of those he helped was involved in last night's events; and at least the Roundhouse was spared. But our neighbourhood seems a little less safe, the menace a little too real. Right now, I don't feel like understanding.

Condemnation feels like the only appropriate reaction to those who have violated what should be our haven.

Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor to the New Statesman.