They liked him, and soon he was asked to sleep on-site to look after everything at night. For several weeks he stayed with his friend's brother.His first few weeks there weren't easy. To begin with, he washed dishes, but eventually he found some Brazilian builders who were renovating a £1.1m house in Clapham and who agreed to take him on as a labourer. A girl who lived next to his girlfriend in S?Paulo said that she had a brother there who would help him. He sold his bike, borrowed some money, and on 13 March 2002, flew to London on a six-month tourist visa. Jean said that, frustrated, he raised his voice; at this the official put a stamp in his passport and suggested that he try again in 2012.Instead, a year later, he tried Britain. Annoyed, he went back two weeks later, saying that he saw no reason why they should refuse him.

They asked him what had changed in his circumstances over the past two weeks and confirmed their refusal. (Locals estimate that about a quarter of Gonzaga's population currently resides in the United States.)About four years ago, Jean paid for a language course in Boston, Massachusetts, and applied for a visa so that he could attend. After being questioned at the consulate about how he would support himself there, he was refused. It seems he did well enough, but in the modern age it is hard to earn the kind of living in Brazil to satisfy even modestly big dreams: of building a house and looking after one's parents, of setting up one's own business.A tradition of going abroad to work, mostly to the US, established itself in Minas Gerais, the region in which Jean grew up, long before the rest of the country. For the next 10 years, he moved around, mostly between his family home, Gonzaga, and S?Paulo. He concentrated on qualifying as an electrician and putting his skills into practice. After that, Jean declared that his dream was to be an electrician and that he wanted to bring electricity and light to his family's home.When Jean Charles de Menezes was 14 - 13 years before his death, 13 years before eyewitnesses who had seen the supposed suicide bomber in his final moments would report "I saw him shoot him five times"; "a tall Asian guy, shaved head, slight beard, with a rucksack"; "four dull bangs"; "I seen this guy who appears to have a bomb belt and wires coming out" and "he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox - he looked absolutely petrified, and then he sort of tripped..." - he left home for the first time, to study in Gonzaga.

One day he mashed up a banana with some charcoal and made a primitive battery that lit a bulb for two hours. Maybe it was the fact that his family didn't have it when he was young that made him so entranced by electricity.His mother remembers the day they went into Gonzaga and Jean saw the local electrician climbing the wooden pole, his feet digging into the wood as he made his way up. To begin with, he was only trusted with radios that seemed busted beyond repair, but even these he would return fixed. The next year, he did a correspondence course and took it all in.