As delegates gather in Liverpool for the government's annual Comic Con, should they venture outside (a big ask, I know) and look over the quay... there in all of its glory is a newly-painted Royal Fleet Auxiliary in the shape of RFA Fort Victoria.
It's the last of its kind and the old lady had a troubled start at Belfast's historic shipyard, where IRA bombs delayed its launch by a year or two. It might have serviced our French-built aircraft carriers in the recent visit to the Far East, but this honour went instead to a newer one made in South Korea.
In fact as the few vessels of this kind we have remaining are increasingly beset by sore knees and that sort of thing, we've discussed borrowing one from the US; but they don't have many to spare either: it has ten times fewer shipbuilding yards than China... perhaps we can borrow one of theirs?
Ironically one reason the Fort Vic is here is because naval dockyards at Plymouth were sold off to contractors who charge more for parking and the Navy doesn't have the app.
The answer is obvious ~ and here I risk being imprisoned on terrorist charges like all pensioners do nowadays ~ and that is to sell off the Royal Navy too?
That way we all get to line the river banks and watch them launch amongst the shit left by our water companies.
The sermon today is necessarily brief. Beside gravity, Isaac Newton predicted the collapse of civilisation as being likely to happen in 2060. Given the same variables a computer at MIT suggested it would be 2040. I'm going 2020, thus it's playing out. As the Romans used to say, Carpe Diem... seize the carp.
* For readers beyond the UK, the UK public were invited to name its latest research vessel and voted for 'Boaty McBoatface'. Being democratic, the choice was annulled by the government in the same way that it refuses capital means of punishment; although they have since named a prison 'HMP Hangy McHangface'.
