The camcorder tapes discovered at the location and now studied in some detail are an early example of difficult history. Plenty of the tapes are missing and many older ones appear to have been reused and rerecorded onto (in whole or in part, at random and at different points in the tapes), without much care or attention. What’s left is just a scattering of scenes, evidence and ‘diary fragments’ spanning several weeks, all out of sequence and entirely incomplete. To make things worse, it was Andrew that was placed by Curtis in charge of labelling and organising the tapes for the archival purpose and he was not a good organiser drunk or sober and not a good handwriter either, in any case prone to switching what he called the ‘system’ of his archive on a day by day basis. The Dewey Decimal system was not for Andrew and an accurate digital barcodes calendar was not for him either. In fact to look at that great stack of tapes in their boxes and their miss-labelled glory, is to stare a certain terror in the face. The dates are not easy to follow and the story that’s mashed or meshed in them is very hard to trace. But be these things as they may, there are those who say that after what happened there in Doncaster the lack of a coherent timeline to a pile of video tapes is hardly surprising and in point of fact the very least of our human worries.

Most experts’ opinion dates the start of the real big trouble from November 21st although there is one apparently earlier tape where Curtis (pouring large whiskey in a plastic cup) is heard to mention something about a repeat episode of Star Trek, an ‘idea he had last night’ and ‘a desire to look at some of the Quantum stuff in practice,’ but since that Andrew is looking bored and throwing darts into the crumbling cellar wall at this moment on the tape, it don’t look like the project he proposes has really got much legs at that particular point.

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