It was never easy to approach strangers and ask them questions. Every time, I felt as if I were rucking against basic social training. And for no good reason. Those days would have dark evenings. After the Christmas mugging, I discovered that I simply could not do it any more. A photographer and I had gone to Greenwich for the day, and the weather was against us: scathing wind off the river, hail-hard drizzle. I approached a couple of people and was rebuffed: no time, no way, no English. My brain was prepared, once more, to put duty over taste. But my body was launching a protest. A cold, acrid mass of resistance was building in my chest, heavier with each passing moment. It waxed especially massive when I reflected that I was obliged to gather at least twelve usable responses before we could consider calling it a day. After twenty minutes or so I felt anchored to the corner, unable to move, almost unable to breathe from this leaden, freezing obstacle deep in my core, a pillar of misery, my mind struggling to think of ways to justify my body’s total refusal. Could I claim to be ill, or fake a crisis phone call that would summon me away? As it happened, the photographer picked up on my private hell. I can only assume that it wasn’t as private as I thought.

I told her about being mugged, and she was sympathetic, very sympathetic. We went to a nearby pub to warm up and have a drink – a pint, before noon. At once the glacial obstruction dissolved.

‘Tell them,’ the photographer said. She had ordered a bloody Mary, which had the poster-paint look of long-bottled tomato juice. ‘They can’t expect you to go out and do these interviews after something like that. Tell them you won’t do it any more.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. This was my first real job and I felt I was in no position to be making demands.

‘Then let’s fake it,’ the photographer said. ‘I’ll snap the first twelve people who come along, and you make up the quotes. We’ll be done in half an hour.’