September 8, 2022		INDEX
The mysterious Gemma
I moved to Millom chiefly because there are houses here made of slate rather than bricks or other conventional building materials. One of the odd qualities of slate is that radio waves have a tough job getting through it, or at least they do if it is thick enough. This means that a conventional mobile phone simply does not work in my new house. However, the house I bought proved to have large holes in the roof. When I contacted a local roofer we had a number of conversations and it seemed like I could get it re-roofed at an affordable price. The third or fourth time we spoke he asked me if Gemma would be attending a proposed meeting on site. My presumption is that Gemma works for MI5 and had contacted the roofer seeking to implant some kind of radio signal router in the proposed roof. I don't know what to do about this. On the one hand I could kick up and lose this roofer. On the other hand it's quite likely that MI5 wants to be discovered and is merely seeking to disrupt my life (its mission) by getting me to cancel the job. And still there are holes in the roof and winter is coming. Oddly spy fiction is older than spying and may have brought about the existence of bodies like MI6 rather than the spy organisations causing the fiction to be written. John Le Carre used to be a spook and knows what he is talking about. He's good on things like spycraft, which is interesting though totally absurd (like most things to do with the spooks). His fiction should be seen as a PR job for the spooks, which it is. However, if you read between the lines there's a lot of truth that inadvertently gets through. Mostly the spooks are dealing with traitors in their own ranks or defectors from a rival spying organisation. Actual real spies (people obtaining information from organisations they work for or have infiltrated) hardly get a look in. And of course MI5 has probably never been involved in the prosecution of a genuine spy other than ones named by defectors or turncoats in their own ranks. But to get back to that spycraft, it is astonishing how deceptive these people are.
INDEX Jonathan Brind	September 8, 2022