Breaking yard, Brentford

This is where the ascent stages of the unflown last two missions – the last two official missions, anyway – were finally broken up, far from their birthplace and any possible protest. Wilson, famously enthusiastic about the 'white heat of technology', was not quite so enamoured when the technology originated north of the border and rather embarrassingly put to shame not only the abortive English programme but the NASA efforts as well. Better, he must have decided, for the Soviets to reach the Moon first than for the Scots to show up both the English and their American paymasters.

Of course the safety standards of the other programmes – even the early NASA vehicles with their unfortunate habit of exploding, and arguably even the Soviet programme – were considerably higher. The 'special' fuels, whose exact details are now apparently lost, and whose exact makeup is a subject of intense debate in certain obscure fora, left many of the sites associated with the programme perhaps permanently uninhabitable.

Overhead the feral parakeets shriek, their plumage curiously bright in the winter sun. Is it coincidence that parakeets were used as early test subjects in the programme? Perhaps.