Giles takes us through the gift shop (‘Easier to come in the back way when the place is full of people,’ he says) raising a hand to a black-clad girl with a walkie-talkie who is presumably policing new arrivals to the exhibition rooms. She barely glances at us as we breeze past.

We turn sharp left to navigate a newly installed temporary wall and enter what will be the last room of the Museum’s latest blockbuster exhibition. Despite Giles’ assertion that the hang is well underway, only a few paintings are in place, but a number of closed crates are dotted about, allowing the paintings within to slowly acclimatise to the museum environment. In here, the walls are a deep burgundy, the sort of colour you’d expect to find in an upper-class Victorian parlour, and the smell of paint is still heavy in the air. Pairs of museum-grade picture hooks are studded across the walls, and in a couple of places I spot L brackets, additional support for heavier paintings. The distribution of hooks suggests they’re going for a couple of salon-style clusters of smaller paintings, but mostly the works will hang alone, probably at a standard height of 147 centimetres on centre. Around the room people are working to fix placards low on the walls, full of detail about each painting: title, artist, medium and owner.

‘Nothing to worry about. Never missed a gala opening yet. Things are a bit further along in the other galleries.’ Giles sets off toward a portal that has been adorned with faux Victorian plasterwork to resemble a vaulted arch atop acanthus-leaf corbels.

John follows Giles, but I stop. My attention is caught by two packers who have a huge crate laid out on the floor. There’s nothing remarkable about the crate except for its size: it must be at least three metres long and it bristles with stickers proclaiming the fragility of its contents. The two men in their yellowy-brown dustcoats kneel at opposite corners of the travelling crate, almost as though they’re paying homage to the gods of art or involved in a primitive ritual to invoke colour. They murmur to each other and I catch the name ‘Tommo’. One of the packers raises an eyebrow at his colleague and receives a nod in response. Each man picks up a drill.