I’ve got to tell you this. Quick story from Paris? Actually from the Eurostar train going there. We were sitting opposite a miserable young woman and her resigned looking boyfriend. She was permanently miserable. Hard-wired. But she was also young and it is a new world. She called a hospital to cancel an appointment. I could tell you what it was for. I could tell you which hospital, what department, which doctor, what specialism. I could tell you her name, full address, phone number and National Insurance number.

But I won’t because clearly I’m so ancient I’ve twigged that this is enough information to rob her blind. If not from the easiest-ever identity theft – I might have to strain to sound young and female but otherwise, doddle – then from the fact that I knew how long she was going to be away from home. I do own a lock pick set. (Seriously. Research. Also a bump key. Never got any of it to work, officer.)

Anyway. After she’d given us all this information by way of phone and a loud voice, she started wondering how far it was across the Channel. When learning from her iPhone that it was 31 miles, she sneered. Is that all? It’s just 31 miles? What’s all the fuss about?

Hundreds of years of trying to dig that tunnel. The political, cultural, economic and artistic effort made by generations and she sneers.

I realise I’ve clearly got old enough to be disappointed that there are people who can’t see effort but what struck me more is that she won’t. She will never see the industry that went into that Channel Tunnel: not appreciate it, not even see it. It’s her loss.