Familiar thunder rolls across the sky from the east. The guns east of Shoebury are being cleared. Out there along the estuarine coast is Foulness, which is a real place name. Back in the Fifties, Nigel Kneale and his production team scouted locations out here on the Thames Estuary for QUATERMASS II. In the story, the place they found is called Winnerden Flats, because they thought its real name sounded too fictional. Mucking Marshes. Foulness is a sealed military test site. It’s supposed to be the safest and most peaceful place in the country, aside from the grenades, mines, mortars and missiles. Five working farms, a village, an accidental wildlife preserve, barely changed in a hundred years. I’ve spent my life listening to the sound of the guns booming down the estuary, fired from a village frozen in time.