As I am writing this, I know I have strayed from the history of the day, but I don’t want to write about the next bit. I don’t really want to remember it. I know I will have to, though, because it is the job given to me by Chris Marker. My job is to remember things in this journal for all time.

So I will force myself to remember what happened and tell you about it. We carried on, plodding along, for mile after mile, the road seeming to go nowhere. Then at last we came to some parkland and trees on either side of the motorway and it felt like we had finally got to the edge of London. We were getting worried that we might not be so safe now, though, because the motorway wasn’t high up any more (not elevated). It was running along the ground like a normal motorway, and the trees and grass and weeds came right up to it, and in some places right on to it, so that the road was disappearing. It felt strange to be away from buildings. I’d been among buildings for so long I couldn’t hardly remember what the countryside was like, especially having no TV to look at.

Instead of making me happy to be out among trees and bushes and twittering birds it made me fearful. It was all too unfamiliar and strange. I wasn’t the only one. All the others were huddling together and they went even more quieter. We had come such a long way it seemed. We were walking along like that, all muddled and huddled together, eyes fearful, nobody laughing or joking, and nobody even complaining any more, when we heard a noise.

There was this one time we went on holiday to Dorset. A nice little cottage in some fields. This was obviously a long time before the illness came, when the world was normal and everything was all right. But the cottage was near a dog kennels where they bred Alsatians. There were big, scary signs everywhere saying ‘KEEP OUT’. You wouldn’t have gone near it, though, because of the noise of all the dogs. All day and night they seemed to keep it up, barking away like mad, and howling. It sounded horrible. I did get used to it, but sometimes I think the wind would change direction and we would hear them well loud and close and then I’d get scared. I was scared they might get out and come charging across the fields. All dogs together like that make a different sort of noise to one dog barking, they all mix into one big noise. A din it is called.