Confession

I have succumbed to fashion, or at least a craze, and have bought one of these. Today the weather is fine enough to wear it, and the circumstances enough to justify it: something strange has happened to my phone line and therefore my internet connection, just when I actually needed my email for once (and, since you're no doubt dying to know, Musica Bella fell at the 12th fence, no it's no dibs on the sweepstake either). Much tearing hair, unplugging and replugging of all available devices, abandoned phone queueing for the engineers, and so forth (I suspect it's one of my cheapo phone handsets).

But Norman Tebbit would approve of me (in this as nothing else): I got on the bike and found an internet place open.

The story of the slogan is an interesting one, for although it sounds like the kind of stoicism my parents' generation prided themselves on for the whole of World War 2, this is an example of the approach in preparation for and in the early days of the war, some more famous examples of which were rather derided at the time.