It was a day when we all felt we could do anything as a nation, and when I had first moved to London, I had been excited that I would be able to watch the parade and go to all the celebrations afterwards. But the prospect had soured for me somewhat when I had passed by the square one afternoon in mid-July and stopped to watch a platoon of Pioneers drilling in preparation.

‘Platoon will advance left turn,’ their CO had barked, although their fifteen-year-old faces showed they weren’t entirely concentrating on their task. ‘Platoon right turn.’ Behind scaffolding, I had seen red marble panels with the unmistakable outlines of Marx, Engels and Blunt lining a platform that was still being constructed, while, tucked away in a corner of the square, a gang of cleaners was attempting to scrub away something that had been crudely painted on a plinth: a sort of vampire with blood-dripping fangs, wearing a military uniform and cap. STALIN, its artist had scrawled below. Nearby, soldiers manned little machine-gun turrets on strange beetle-like armoured cars. There were a few people milling about, but it was a dreary day so the square was largely empty.

I had watched, curious, when the armoured cars suddenly started up, pouring thick black exhaust fumes into the air, and the soldiers began shouting to each other. In a rush of sound, they sped off into the square and I followed their path, trying to work out what was happening. Then I saw: an aged-looking couple – in their sixties or thereabouts – were hurrying towards the platform. The man was carrying something in his arms.

The few sightseers stopped. Workmen who had been bolting together the scaffolding let their tools fall idle and watched as the couple scrambled to the front of the stage, jointly took a hold of whatever it was the man was carrying and stepped apart to unfurl a home-made banner: a sheet, with the words DEMOCRACY NOW in red letters roughly made from sticky tape or such like. I had only heard of this sort of thing – the weak political protests that happened occasionally. What did they really expect to come of it? A public uprising? After thirteen years of conflict and upheaval, all we wanted was peace. No one was going to join them to see their last remaining friends and family destroyed by more war, whether it was against a foreign enemy or against our own countrymen. And out of the corner of my eye I noticed a young man discreetly taking photographs of them. His presence was no coincidence.