The reason this reporter has not, until now, given her two penneth worth on the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, is because she was pretty certain she had dreamt the whole thing. Alternatively, we had all been sucked through our television screens and found ourselves in a low budget Russian spy drama on the Netflix.
This reporter's subsequent reaction to the saga of Skripal and his daughter being found poisoned on a shopping centre bench in the vicinity of Salisbury's Zizzi restaurant last week, was that all the glamour had gone out of spying.
Where were the slick Russian spies in their Tom Ford aviator sunglasses, where were the rich opulent settings of exclusive members-only clubs and mega yachts? This reporter felt cheated and so, quite reasonably she thought at the time, decided to dismiss it as fiction.
What we also came to realise as shoppers passed on by the Russian duo convinced they were on drugs - and if you include nerve agent as a drug then indeed they were - and police finally turned up without any protective clothing, was that no one in Salisbury could quite believe that the world of Russian spying had come to their town either.
The fallout from this actually rather serious incident of poisoning by an unknown perpetrator in an unspecified location (though we obviously suspect Putin as the culprit and the Zizzi restaurant as the most likely crime scene, as the Skripals had dined there earlier) has been fraught with blunder.
There was a message sent out on Twitter, which declared the table the Skripals had been eating at had been burnt along with everything on it, as though that dealt with the situation. While fellow diners at Zizzi have been advised to wash their clothes, a full week after the poisoning happened, which doesn't say much for the perceived hygiene standards of Salisbury.
Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has dealt with the incident, which many less clear headed individuals are certain will spark World War Three with Russia, by declaring we will not send the England team out to the World Cup. "That will teach the Russian rotters a lesson", he was heard to declare, or save the English football players another pasting, others were heard to mutter.
Fear not, someone is taking the threat of war - most likely nuclear - seriously and that is an entrepreneur called Lincoln Miles who runs Britain's largest prepping superstore, Preppers Shop, from his base in Roche, Cornwall. Inspired by the survival food packages on sale in America, Mr Miles believes for the highly affordable price of £1,000 we can all stock up on enough fodder to get us through several months in our nuclear bunkers.
Crucially, he advises that any good prepper will purchase their supplies little by little to prevent alerting suspicion.
If this is all a little too mundane for you, you could always go and live on Mars to escape from World War Three, as Elon Musk, the billionaire recently responsible for flinging a sports car into space, is proposing.
Flying us all to Mars is actually Mr Musk's next project as he says starting to colonise this planet is the key to the survival of the human race. We can return to the burnt out husk that will be Earth once nuclear war has ended and repopulate it.
This reporter proposes leather shorts as key to our survival. She can't see this proposal as any less effective than anything else that has been suggested thus far. This pair from Saint Laurent are just what all good survivalists on Netflix seem to be wearing and in the event we are actually all now living inside the TV screen, this reporter wants to be appropriately dressed.
This reporter's subsequent reaction to the saga of Skripal and his daughter being found poisoned on a shopping centre bench in the vicinity of Salisbury's Zizzi restaurant last week, was that all the glamour had gone out of spying.
Where were the slick Russian spies in their Tom Ford aviator sunglasses, where were the rich opulent settings of exclusive members-only clubs and mega yachts? This reporter felt cheated and so, quite reasonably she thought at the time, decided to dismiss it as fiction.
What we also came to realise as shoppers passed on by the Russian duo convinced they were on drugs - and if you include nerve agent as a drug then indeed they were - and police finally turned up without any protective clothing, was that no one in Salisbury could quite believe that the world of Russian spying had come to their town either.
The fallout from this actually rather serious incident of poisoning by an unknown perpetrator in an unspecified location (though we obviously suspect Putin as the culprit and the Zizzi restaurant as the most likely crime scene, as the Skripals had dined there earlier) has been fraught with blunder.
There was a message sent out on Twitter, which declared the table the Skripals had been eating at had been burnt along with everything on it, as though that dealt with the situation. While fellow diners at Zizzi have been advised to wash their clothes, a full week after the poisoning happened, which doesn't say much for the perceived hygiene standards of Salisbury.
Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has dealt with the incident, which many less clear headed individuals are certain will spark World War Three with Russia, by declaring we will not send the England team out to the World Cup. "That will teach the Russian rotters a lesson", he was heard to declare, or save the English football players another pasting, others were heard to mutter.
Fear not, someone is taking the threat of war - most likely nuclear - seriously and that is an entrepreneur called Lincoln Miles who runs Britain's largest prepping superstore, Preppers Shop, from his base in Roche, Cornwall. Inspired by the survival food packages on sale in America, Mr Miles believes for the highly affordable price of £1,000 we can all stock up on enough fodder to get us through several months in our nuclear bunkers.
Crucially, he advises that any good prepper will purchase their supplies little by little to prevent alerting suspicion.
If this is all a little too mundane for you, you could always go and live on Mars to escape from World War Three, as Elon Musk, the billionaire recently responsible for flinging a sports car into space, is proposing.
Flying us all to Mars is actually Mr Musk's next project as he says starting to colonise this planet is the key to the survival of the human race. We can return to the burnt out husk that will be Earth once nuclear war has ended and repopulate it.
This reporter proposes leather shorts as key to our survival. She can't see this proposal as any less effective than anything else that has been suggested thus far. This pair from Saint Laurent are just what all good survivalists on Netflix seem to be wearing and in the event we are actually all now living inside the TV screen, this reporter wants to be appropriately dressed.
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