But it is because of this propensity of ours that perhaps I may be permitted the fancy metaphors. I did see fish in that sea, as if whales and dolphins had chosen to show themselves coloured scarlet and green, but did not understand at the time what it was I was seeing, and certainly did not know how much my own personal experience was common, was shared: this is what, looking back, we acknowledge first — our similarities, not our differences.

One of the things we now know was true for everybody, but which each of us privately thought was evidence of a stubbornly — preserved originality of mind, was that we apprehended what was going on in ways that were not official. Not respectable. Newscasts and newspapers and pronouncements were what we were used to, what we by no means despised: without them we would have become despondent, anxious, for of course one must have the stamp of the official, particularly in a time when nothing is going according to expectation. But the truth was that every one of us became aware at some point that it was not from official sources — we were getting the facts which were building up into a very different picture from the publicised one. Sequences of words were crystallising events into a picture, almost a story: And then this happened, and so-and-so said… but more and more often these were words dropped during a casual conversation, and perhaps even by oneself. 'Yes, of course!' one would think. That's it. I've known that for some time. It's just that I haven't actually heard it put like that, I hadn't grasped it…

Attitudes towards authority, towards Them and They, were increasingly contradictory, and we all believed that we were living in a peculiarly anarchistic community. Of course not. Everywhere was the same. But perhaps it would be better to develop this later, stopping only to remark that the use of the word 'it' is always a sign of crisis, of public anxiety. There is a gulf between: 'Why the hell do they have to be so incompetent!' and 'God, things are awful!' just as 'Things are awful' is a different matter again from 'It is starting here too,' or 'Have you heard any more about it?'