I’d only started working full time as a photographer the previous summer. I was getting a little work from the local paper and occasional magazine commissions but mostly I was following my own ideas.

I was living in a fairly derelict squat in Whitechapel, an area of slum housing and street homelessness. The City was demolishing its way eastwards, closing the small shops that had served the area for so long, forcing out the cabinet makers, leather workers, chicken slaughterers, kosher cafés and a host of other now-forgotten trades. I’d been moved on by the bulldozers a few times, the last being from the 17th century Black Lion Yard, once the site of Jonathan Muff’s notorious Molly-house. By the time it was levelled by an uncaring council it had become home to more than a dozen jeweller’s shops, and was renowned as the Hatton Garden of the East End.

I had mixed feelings about covering the Jubilee celebrations. I was fascinated by the traditions and rituals of British life but angered by the money being thrown at lavish state banquets and high-profile celebrations set against the very visible growing poverty and disregard of the vulnerable.

The sudden peppering of the generally tatty East End with a mixture of Union flags, balloons and posters of royalty alternating with ‘Stuff the Stupid Queen’ graffiti was just the kind of contradiction that attracted me.

I had just one camera, a Nikon FTn. I’d scraped together just enough money to get a worn out second-hand 28mm f2 – the worst lens I’ve owned since my 9th birthday present of a 1955 Kodak Duaflex 2. The only thing in its favour was that the vignetting and the flare helped hide how unsharp the corners were. 35mm colour transparency film was pretty rough and, with a useable dynamic range of maybe 6 stops on a good day, exposure was critical. I shot this picture on Ektachrome-X, 64 ASA, an E3 process film which was a bit cheaper than the rather better Kodachrome.