I have just read the last two words of D.M Fraser’s Ignorant Armies, a book that has besotted me these past two weeks, but based on those final words I must now begin all over again since I find what I had understood to be changed, changed utterly.

Co-incidentally a Chopper bike, lower to the ground than the traditional Chopper has just passed the window decorated or rather drowned in an overflowing lambskin. As a child I associated the owning of a Chopper with the immediate promise of adventure without actually ever having to get on it.