As humans we seem to have some kind of fascination with death. We are preoccupied with it. It's all over our televisions and in our every day language. When the first human beings appeared on the planet, their main aim was survival. Sheltering from the elements. Where the ape like ancestors of man would gather together at night. Sleeping with one eye open and listening to the sounds in the darkness.

A million or two years of evolution on and nothing much has changed. Our dwellings are high-tech and there are millions more ways to "buy the farm", but if you lay awake at night listening, it's the same thing. We live our lives, we have our moment in the sun. Then we wither away and die. Everything else is negotiable. And if you listen really carefully you can hear our ancient past, and our future blowing on the night breeze.

If you find yourself lying awake at night, in the dark and just listening, it's probably time you developed some elementary urban sanity. However crazy that may be.

Have you ever listened? Just stopped and listened at the end of the day. To the people in your neighbourhood coming home. Taking the dog for a walk. Settling in for the night. Locking the house up and hopefully shutting out the night. I'd always listened. And you can almost hear a primitive fear in the streets. It wafts on the breeze in the same way as it has probably done for millions of years. Laying awake at night, wondering if there'll be a tomorrow. But there is some mind trick we pull on ourselves that stops us thinking about it. That allows us to be complacent and not wonder too much of what it's all about. Because if everyone stopped and contemplated their lives, we'd all probably go mad. And of course some of us do. And there are some of us who learn to deal with it in the most extraordinary ways.