The word conservation comes at you at a slant. It used to be fuzzy and related to things like keeping the trees in your street trimmed. Now it is the war cry of the eco warriors and has been joined by a whole band of ragged foot soldiers such as the widely used oxymoronic ‘sustainable development’, ‘global warming’, ‘greenhouse gas’, etc Recall the good old days when all we had to deal with was soil erosion. Heritage, once redolent of crumbling old castles and perfectly thatched huts in mountain settings, now reflects a lot of bad signage with gothic script, a novelty gift shop and fatties in tensile leisurewear.

Nice words like green and energy have taken on ominous new meanings. “Hell, I’m so depleted in energy,” I said to a friend. He said: “Have you run out of gas?”