Now we are ready to head for the Horn / Way-hey, roll and go!

What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.

This was a 'marked' police car. All state-of-the-art technology: the big number on the top for helicopter recognition during 'riot situations'; the regulation police-issue revolver, that they always swear blind they never carry, in its usual clip beneath the glovey, the speed trap monitor thingy; and an unholy host of computer-assisted in-car crime-busting paraphernalia.

The deal is: You post a photo from 10 years ago and one from now. It’s like viewing a painting of Cronus eating his children, but online.