Annie Macron

It was not in their HQ.

So when I joined, they were scattered in various little offices across London.

And the recruitment or the training sector was right next to Bond Street.

Very nice location.

So yeah, you walk through the door, you don't know what to expect.

You know, you've got two weeks of being inducted, as they called it.

And you get your two weeks training and then you're lopped off to whichever section you're assigned to.

And you have

I think it was six months probation with a so-called mentor.

Most of them were crap, actually.

And then once you've gone through that, you are assigned to your work and other desks.

Desks being the subject areas.

Sorry, that sounds really boring.

Oh, God, back in the day, back in the old offices, it was pretty crap.

I mean, if you think sort of British civil service, threaded carpets and, you know, duct tape holding down wires and all that sort of shit, it was really, really bad.

When they moved to the new HQ, back in the old HQ now, back in 1994, it was all terribly high tech and very nice.

But yeah, it was civil service grade, I think is the best way of putting it.

It is not ostensibly a glamorous job, would be the best way of putting it.

But the weirdness is when you suddenly start having to deploy secret techniques to investigate people and you start reading their communications or listening or getting agent reports coming across your desk and all that sort of thing.

So for the first few weeks when you're learning that, it is really genuinely odd.