Is this the beginning of the end ... of the world

Less of a bang and more of a whimper... Andy Martin reckons the end will be marked by a long, slow steady decline, punctuated by ever more overwhelming catastrophes – a bit like now really!

Apocalypse ... if not now then when? (Getty)

Not that I have anything against Slough as such, but I get why John Betjeman would have written: “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.” Slough, it should be noted, is really (pre-war) Slough in this poem, but it also represents everything that Betjeman does not like (“It’s not fit for humans now”). My own preferred solution to all architectural and other disasters is to have an asteroid wipe out the entire earth. Either that or a Death Star.

It would solve the litter problem at a stroke too – although I guess there would be an awful lot of terrestrial garbage flying through space. Our final all too appropriate legacy would be KFC cartons and Coke bottles scattered all over the interstellar void. We could, perhaps, take off in a star ship bound for a new Eden, but let’s face it we would be bound to screw that up too. Better to let the beetles or the Triffids take over here surely. Maybe the dinosaurs could make a comeback in a new Jurassic world.