I See Dead Idiots

[image error]

There are moments — how can I deny it? — when my Roman ancestors get up and march through my mind, sandal-shod feet echoing off newly built roads and pointing everywhere going “Ist, ist, ist” (the indicative pronoun for something foreign and disgusting, and incidentally close to the Portuguese for “this” “isto”.  Which tells you everything you need to know about what the first Romans to come to the Peninsula found and thought.)

And somewhere behind that is the idea that we’re going to need c...