A card popped through the letterbox today from the Morning Star Church Of God. I wondered if this was evidence of some new alliance between the Communist Party and evangelical Christians. Maybe the sermons would consist of harangues from the editorial pages of the Morning Star about the necessity of building the class struggle by going on strike every five minutes. I looked in vain for a hammer-and-sickle-and-crucifix motif on the card, then turned my attention to the text:

Are You A Victim?, it read, Every person is victimised by Satan, either by Depression, Stress, Heart Problems, Baroness, Skin Diseases, Kidney, Cancer, ENT and many more. No Hope + No Cure = No Peace. But There Is Hope.

My initial surmise about the Communist element was clearly correct. Not only does Satan plague us with ailments and infirmities, but sets the aristocracy against us in the form of that Baroness. I pictured a sort of fairy tale baddie, or “Baroness” Margaret Thatcher, though of course it’s hard to tell the difference.

Incidentally, when I am eventually ennobled, as is bound to happen sooner or later, I think I’d like to be a Baron. The title has a medieval, or Mitteleuropean quality about it that ‘Lord’ or ‘Earl’ or ‘Duke’ somehow lack.