This song is so perfect, like a four-minute movie. A miniature kitchen sink drama. Shot in black-and-white, of course, with the principal characaters played by Albert Finney and Rita Tushingham.

It could even be a companion piece for the 1947 film It Always Rains On Sunday, perhaps the originator of the genre of kitchen sink realism.

The production, by Johnny Franz – he also produced Dusty Springfield – is remarkable. Angela Morley’s string arrangement shimmers sadly and spookily in one speaker while a guitar strums softly in the other.

Scott Walker’s baritone croon, part Andy Williams part Nick Cave, paints a picture of melancholy to match the title.

There’s a girl, of course – “the train window girl” – glimpsed smiling through the smoke of the singer’s cigarette.

There are memories, of “dark little rooms” and “late afternoons.”

There are regrets, there are hopes of a future, glimpsed as the narrator stares sadly out of that rain-lashed window.

Staring at “the cellophane streets” where the “street-corner girl’s a cold trembling leaf.”

Composed by Scott himself, it’s taken from his third solo album Scott 3.

A flop at the time, as was his short-lived TV show, it has come to be regarded as one of his best, spawning songs such as Big Louise and 30 Century Man.