'YOU are about to enter an area containing explosive, poison, weapon, robot and radioactive hazards. When inside the unit do not touch anything without permission. It may explode and kill you. Robots operate inside the unit. These robots have limited vision and may be armed.' The grim warning plastered in lurid red letters across the inch-thick steel doors might be a sinister glimpse into a future where technology has run amok. Or perhaps a set from some interminable Terminator sequel, where an ageing, sagging Arnie is still warning recalcitrant cyborgs of his imminent return.
It is from the heart of Wan Chai, however, that these doors proclaim their misanthropic message, barring passage to the inner sanctum of the police bomb squad, perched high in the appropriately named Arsenal House.
It is only when you step inside and meet the men who daily dice with death by making sure things don't go bang in the night, that you realise this is merely the first of many examples of the pitch-black humour that pervades life in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit.
Its winding corridors are a chamber of horrors, lined with cabinets stuffed full of evidence of man's inhumanity to man; everything from crude cannon-balls to time bombs to the phallic menace of shoulder-launched guided missiles. In one room sits the missile 'model' seized at Kai Tak last month, bound for Israel from a Beijing-based aero-technology firm. In another is a library that is an aspiring Unabomber's wet dream, stacked with volumes such as The Complete Bomb-maker's Guide, Aviation Terrorism, Advanced Bomb Technology, The Anarchist's Cookbook, IRA Weapons And Devices and The Black Book (a particularly nasty CIA tome for agents who find themselves needing to make a bomb from scratch to fuel far-flung insurgencies).
All of which serves to make entering the eyrie of Hong Kong's most experienced bomb-disposal officer seem like stepping into some parallel dimension. Where you would expect to see complex schematics of nasty explosive things hang posters detailing the violin-making skills of Domenico Montagnana and extolling the wonders of Verdi's Falstaff. The sweet strings of Mozart seep from tiny speakers on the window-sill. I am beginning to think I have mistakenly wandered into the offices of the nearby Academy for Performing Arts when a whippet-thin man in a natty blue suit, sporting a white Panama hat and a silver-tipped ebony cane, strides into the room to grab my hand. Meet the explosively eccentric Dominic Brittain; maestro of munitions, an Inspector Morse manque.
When he is not racing around the territory disarming, defusing and destroying all manner of stray ordnance, he can be found in the better seats at the opera or the concert hall, scribbling opinions he will voice in several musical publications. A case, perhaps, of bombs and Brahms.