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Nor any old pasteboard card, either, but a fine laminated plastic job. On which giant scarlet capitals hollered ‘STOP!’ Above this ran the explanatory line: ‘Vehicle Crime
Prevention Notice’, and below it, the kicker: ‘There Are No Valuables Left In This Vehicle’. Underneath that, the azure logo of the Metropolitan Police and beside it the slogan:
‘Safe in the heart of London.’ I plucked it out, turned it over, and learned that: ‘You have been given this card to keep in your car, as vehicles in this area are being targeted
by thieves. Please leave it on your dashboard when leaving the car unattended. Consider leaving your glove box open, so it can be seen to be empty.’

So I stood there for a bit, doing just that. I further considered leaving the boot open, so targeting thieves could see I had not locked the stuff from the open glove box in the boot; leaving
the doors open so they could see I had not shoved the stuff from the open glove box under the seats; and leaving the bonnet open, so they could see I had not hidden the stuff from the open glove
box beneath the scuttle. You know jemmies.

But what I most considered was not leaving the notice on my dashboard in the first place; for thieves, you may have heard, know a thing or two about dishonesty, and on being told ‘There
Are No Valuables Left In This Vehicle’, tend to respond ‘Pull this one, sunshine.’ Especially as the first sentence is unsettlingly ambiguous: notwithstanding its having been
toiled over by the top brains of Scotland Yard, it could equally mean: ‘There Were Once Valuables In This Vehicle But There Are None Left’, which strongly suggests that breaking into
this car is a doddle. Give us that coat-hanger, Wayne.

I do wish the top brains had come to me. If they had said, ‘We have a bit of a problem, Al, more cars than ever are being turned over, but the police can do nothing, they have got their
hands full going round poking notices under windscreen wipers, got any ideas?’, I would have suggested that drivers be advised to leave a rucksack on the back seat with wires dangling from
it, preferably attached to a clock, and a luggage-label reading: ‘Osama bin Laden, 13a, Pondicherry Crescent, Ealing.’ Either that or gum a luminous sign to the rear window announcing:
‘Turkish poultry on board.’

As to their keynote slogan, what possessed the Met to come up with: ‘Safe in the heart of London’? For that is exactly what I have, and I see no reason to advertise the fact to
villains who, having ransacked my car, seek to take the next step up the acquisition chain. And no, since you ask, I take no comfort from the probability that innovative Old Bill policy is, even as
I type, putting together a second elegant plastic notice reading: ‘There Are No Valuables Left In This Safe’, and advising me to keep its door open.

Still, needs must when the devil drives, and if what he is driving is my car up to my door, its boot considerately left open by me to make it easier for him to heave my safe into it, then I
suppose the Met must do everything in its power to stop him, even if it means suspending all police leave in the never-ending battle to deploy plastic notices round the clock before rushing back to
the nick to spend the rest of the day squinting at CCTV footage in the desperate hope of clocking someone doing 41 mph on Hammersmith Flyover at 3 a.m.

It is incumbent on each and every one of us to be proactive in this great new crime initiative. Why not make your own deterrent placards? Before going out for a walk, hang round your neck:
‘Do Not Mug This Man, He Is Carrying No Cash, Credit Cards, Cellphone, Or Keys’. Fearful of copping a house-trashing in your absence? Try: ‘Do not piss on this garden, we are
growing top-quality Colombian Gold, please call later.’ Missed the last bus? ‘Do Not Attempt To Rape This Woman, He Is A Cabinet Minister In Drag.’

And mind how you go.

I
N
all the 31 years, 8 months, 22 days, 13 hours and 27 minutes that I had been writing regularly for
The Times
, I
had never been as gobsmacked by anything in it as I was at 8.12 a.m. on Monday, January 16, 2006, the minute up to which all those other minutes had led. In the interests of precision, I wish I
could tell you how many seconds there were on the end of the minutes, but I can’t. That is because, when the minutes began, back in 1974, I did not have an Artex clock. None of us had. We did
not know about the Artex clock until Monday morning, at 8.12, when we opened our copies of
The Times
.

To page 8. Where, beneath two unforgivably sloppy recipes for, on the left, duck salad with tarragon from Thomasina Miers, and, on the right, roast chestnuts from Joanna Weinberg, there was an
advertisement from Times Offers Direct which put both these women to professional shame. How Ms Miers will ever hold up her head again after telling her readers to marinate the duck for ‘a
minimum of one hour, but preferably three to four’, or Ms Weinberg go out in public after telling hers, even more slaphappily, to roast the chestnuts until ‘one of them pops with a loud
bang’, I cannot begin to imagine. The sooner each coughs up £19.95 for an Artex clock to bolt beside her hob, the likelier both are to stave off their leaving parties.

For the Artex clock, according to the rubric which so unprecedentedly gobsmacked me, is ‘guaranteed to be accurate to less than a second in a million years.’ That is one hell of a
guarantee. I know it to be an honest one, too, because it carries
The Times
imprimatur, which means that the most nit-picking lawyers in the world – they have a collection of my own
nits which is second to none – have nodded it through. They are confident that if, in 1,000,2005 AD, an owner of an Artex clock bangs on the front door of
The Times
and demands his
money back on the grounds that, after only 999,999 years, his clock is two seconds fast, he will not have a leg to stand on.

If, that is, he has legs at all. He’s a queer cove, your Johnny Evolution, and anything might have happened to
Homo sapiens
by then. Either that, or global ennucleation will have
ensured that the only creature left to survive will, by 1,000,2005, have developed into
Cockroach sapiens
, who will have a lot of legs and be able to carry several iffy Artex clocks while
still having a couple of legs free to bang on the
Times
door with. Provided, of course, that it is still
The Times
and not
The Daily Cockroach
; in which event the
management may well disclaim any obligation to honour the guarantee offered by their predecessor in 2006. Should you wish clarification on this point before ringing 0870 789 0716 to order your
clock, I suggest you ring
The Times
’ lawyers. If, mind, unable to contain your excitement, you ordered it as soon as you saw Monday’s ad, I really don’t know what to
suggest.

Some of you may not care: you may hold the view that since the clock will by 1,000,2005 no longer be yours but the property of a cockroach to whom you have no genetic connection, that is an end
of the matter. Others more optimistic, blindly confident that the human race will not, any day now, vaporize itself, may be mortified at the thought that its distant descendant – let us call
it grandchild 786 – will discover that, having been handed down successfully through 30,000 generations, its Artex clock is now on the fritz. Worse yet, your descendant may discover
this by a life-changing shock: it could turn up for the first day at its first job, dressed in its smart new outfit, clutching its smart new briefcase, only to hear: ‘What time do you call
this? You should have been here two seconds ago,’ and find itself out on its ear.

This could be even more disastrous: if the human race has not vaporized itself, by 1,000,2005 AD there will be, according to my slide-rule, over two trillion people on the planet. Jobs will
therefore be extraordinarily scarce, and employers extraordinarily choosy (hence the punctuality discriminator), so that anyone luckless enough to lose his on the very first day might well have no
option but to jump off Westminster Bridge and drown himself. Or rather, given the effect global warming will have had on the River Thames by then, break his neck.

Did I hear you ask if the Artex is an alarm clock? Not half it isn’t.

A
DVISERS
to the Department of Education have advocated compulsory sex instruction in primary schools. A bit late for
that, surely?

daer santa:

this crismas I would like a set of wills, I do not want no ordnry peddle car tho, yu canot pull wiv sunnink ware berds can see your nees going up and down, yu look like a kid, i
want wun of them they do with battries, prefbly a harf-skale frarri or lambergini or simlar, also the seets hav to go flat to make a bed, narmean, i do not have to drore pitchers, we are bofe men
of the werld, red wuld be favrite, wiv wite hide, yores, darren

dear satna:

i have been best mates wiv david pirkins from 4 dores up sinse we was 9, munce and munce now, we get on rill wicked, i hav shown him mine and he hav shown me his, and i have
just read on the bottem of the parot’s cage that it is now posble for 2 yung men to marry wich meens i wuld get harf-shares in his gameboy and ipod and singed rio ferdnand shert and 2-liter
flaggen of sir clif richard fragranse, also if he tragicly fel under a bus i wuld get harf the premian bonns his gran giv him for his crisnin, so wot i wuld like for crismas is a sivil partnership
stifficate, i have bin up the post offis for a naplication form and they tole me to pis off. its stil the same ole story, a fite for luv and glory, but i am sure yu hav these things in lapland, it
is orl the rage there, i hav seen my dads swede videos, yores, boris

deer Father Cristmas:

i do not kno if yu are aqucwainted wiv Father Merphy, it is posible you were at Vatican Junior Infants together, but even if yu do not kno him persnly yu both sing from the same
wossname and see i to i wen it cums to cherch stuf, so i wunder if yu culd hav a word with him becaus all i wont for cristmas is for him to stop poakin his fat nose in ware it is not wonted, he sez
if he catches me one more time in the orgn loft with samanther thingy – i do not know her naim, tall fit girl, brests cummin up a treet and no braces to speek of – he wil blo the wissel
on me and i wil not be aloud to be josef in the nativty play, i wil have to be a donky, mi mum wuld kil me, josef is ded eesy, mi mum just chuks a sheet over me and winds a towl round mi hed, but
with donkys yu have to sow eers and a tale on, she is rubish at sowing, seesons greetings, adam

dere snata:

i am riting on behalf of my partnr, nicklas, 8, on acount of he wares this micky mouse wotch, and i am ashamed to be seen out wiv him, it is not sheek like yu see in mens
magzines, i wuld like him to ware sunnink cool and fashnibble such as a wane roony wotch, wich he wuld do if yu brung him wun for crismas. if yu felt he woznt reddy for that, praps yu culd meet him
halfway, with, frinstance, a micky roony wotch. for miself, i wuld like a DVD of teddys bare piknik, yuors, cheryl

dear santer:

hallo, i wuld like a tikkit for a 10-30 singals hollyday in the sun, i hav seen sunnink like that on the telly ware there is big gerls runnin about wobblin on wite beeches and splashin about in
the rollin scurf and leepin up in the air doing vollyball and wen they cum down agane there is a bloak waitin to catch them and they all larf and go off holding hands for a drink with a flower in
it, and i wuld like to be one of them bloaks, i wuld hav no problem catchin them provided they wasn’t too big, i keep wikkit for the under-13s and can also do 90 pressups, happy crismas,
shaun

deer satan:

becos it is yore jobb to keep yore eer to the ground yu wil hav herd that the topp toy this cristmas is the tyco cyber shocker, a snipp at £74.99, wich is a radio-controld
ball wich terns into a monstr at the tuch of a butten and runs about doin evrything yu say. i wuld like won wear yu tuch the butten and it terns into jenfer lopez. sharlot cherch wuld do at a
pinch, yors, norman

dere santa:

i go to a progresiv school and hav been doing sex education for 3 years since i was 5 and came topp in my theory paper last turm and got a cup and a persnly sined copy of the
book that wun this yeer’s Bad Sex Award, but wen it cum to the practical, the Hedd rote ‘Must try harder’ on mi report, so wot i wuld like for crismas is a large jar of Junior
Viagrer, thank yu, Eric

‘T
HERE
’
S
a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to
come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.’

Spot on, Hamlet, the bird flu situation in a nutshell. Tragically, 130 lines later, he was dead; not, mind, from handling an iffy sparrow, nor even as the result of telling one of Yorick’s
infinite Danish jests about 72 virgins, but just because the flesh is heir to a thousand natural shocks, and you never know your luck. Which, as you have anticipated, brings me to Dr John Reid.

Quite why it should have been the Defence Secretary to whose lot it fell last Sunday to reassure us with the helpful ‘Don’t panic!’ I find it difficult to guess. But not
impossible: evoking – as how could it not – the image of Corporal Jones running about like a, sorry, headless chicken, might it be that it is not Defra at all but the MoD which has hit
upon a cunning plan for our protection? In short, given that Tommy Atkins is already overstretched from Basra to the Khyber Pass and thus in no position to be deployed in ack-ack batteries along
our eastern seaboard, banging away at anything airborne with a runny beak, does Dr Reid envisage remustering the Home Guard?

I think we should be told. I have things to do, columns to write, shelves to put up, roses to prune, cats to worm, and if, any minute now, someone is going to hammer on my front door, hand me a
Lee Enfield, a whistle, a pair of binoculars, and a travel pass to Warminster-on-Sea, I need to put my affairs in order. There is also the question of my rank to be addressed: I do not intend, at
my age, to be squarebashed up and down the shingle in blistering war-surplus boots by some stupid boy. I want nothing less than a colonelcy, a Sam Browne belt, a camouflaged Hillman Minx with a fit
ATS cracker at the wheel, and, in the event of successfully leading my devoted men against a vastly outnumbering horde of enemy gulls coughing their way ashore at Clacton, a DSO.