I ordered larger canvas, stretched on heavy frames, and converted the living room entirely into a studio. The rest of the house began to feel fusty and useless, so I closed and locked many of the doors. I was aware of the irony that, having wanted to connect with a wider world, I was now shutting it out, but it afforded me only amusement, especially after Annie loaned me one of the desktop computers of immense power that the Fire Judges seemed to consider necessary, and gave me remote access to something called the Spine. This was a box in an attic somewhere ("Actually it’s an old nuclear shelter in Belsize Park") and I had my own bit of it where I might keep images and ideas, and what is called read-only access to the rest, meaning that I might see almost anything the company was doing, but not alter it, this being a protection against accidental erasure. Since the Spine was evidently the digital equivalent of a safe, or possibly an engine room, I was grateful for the boundary. Even so, the protections around it were ferocious, and Annie insisted—in a rare moment of straightforward technical lecturing—that I know them off by heart.