Almost every window was broken; every wall was chipped; chunks had been knocked out of walls, and at intervals there was no wall. One house showed the different paperings of six rooms all completely exposed to the gaze.

I looked down to see my dog, Roof, short for Rufus, curled in sleep below the window, unworried by the wings of hummingbirds whirring at speeds of a gillion miles an hour as they flitted in and out of the trumpets of honeysuckle growing on the side of the house.

I said no. Now screw off!

No one needed an Enigma machine to figure out why Jimmy Carter was recalling his days aboard a nuclear submarine.