Occasionally there were encounters with staff who were not aware of David’s project and couldn’t understand what he was doing there. Not surprisingly, they were suspicious and hostile.

Today we waited outside one particular room while the people inside covered up various bits of hardware and notices with post-it notes. We were then allowed into a 20ft square sealed space; there were two shirt-sleeved men inside and paper was strewn everywhere. I spent fifteen minutes taking photographs, mostly of a ladder to a connecting hatch and of the equipment with post-it notes on it. The room was ugly and inhospitable. One of the men left, the other sat and watched me, waiting for me to go so that he could turn his machine on again. While we waited for the keys for the room opposite to turn up, the man started talking to us. “For my part I didn’t want you here, you are shooting with wet film and taking the film off the premises.” I said, “Yes, there is some trust involved here but M and other senior people are having sight of everything I do.” He replied, “We don’t trust anyone here, it’s our job, we aren’t part of anything that goes on here and are in this room by grace and favour”, (by which I assumed he was MI5 or similar). “Nothing personal, but we work with nasty bastards every day and are trying to delay the inevitable happening… the work you are doing may put you at risk.” With this chilling remark we found more neutral conversational ground and talked about cameras, and with lots of “Cheers, mate”, he left, closing the door with a bang.

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