Last Tuesday my wife and I were strolling around Chelsea in London. Visiting London is great, once you get your head round the incredible prices. We got off the tube at Sloane Square, heading down the Kings Road and all the fashionable stores, continuing on to Chelsea Harbour where we found a quaint pub by the river to enjoy a ploughman's lunch.

We walked back via Cheyne Walk. As I looked up at the majestic mansions, where one million pounds would be but a drop in the ocean, I confess to being overcome by a fleeting attack of what can best be described as "property envy". The beautiful red-brick buildings with their immaculately tended gardens and their wonderful views over the Thames seemed a world away from the concrete blocks and dilapidated streets of Mladost.

A group of schoolchildren passed by, holding hands. They were wearing orange knickerbockers, the distinctive uniform of Hill House School, a private junior school in the area. They looked "butter wouldn't melt in their mouth"-angelic. A young teacher berated them for their (very) minor misdemeanours. I was lost in reverie, thinking about my own lost age of innocence a million and a half years ago. Just then a police car passed by, then two, then three, then four, sirens screaming.

We ignored the commotion and headed back to the Kings Road. A whole area of the street was cordoned off. Apparently police were surrounding a flat in Markham Square where a man had been seen firing from a window. Later I heard he'd been shot dead by police. Just a crazy nut, I assumed, perhaps a burglar who'd been interrupted and got nasty? Wrong.

The dead man was a 32-year-old barrister who earned 500,000 pounds a year. He lived in a beautiful flat in London's most prestigious area, a huge glamour portrait of Audrey Hepburn gazing down from his lounge wall. His life turned out to be an illusion. So I guess it really is true. Don't judge by the trappings. True happiness comes from within.