I suppose that most people will be familiar with the notion of being told by your mother to be sure that you put on clean underwear everyday when you were a kid in case something happened to you; like being knocked down by a car which might necessitate being hospitalised urgently and at which point your - hopefully pristine - underwear would be liable to be being indirectly inspected; a matter upon which the entire reputation of every good living family hinged.

And so, I caught myself thinking over the weekend while attempting to find a reputable landscape gardener to come along to quote for finishing off our garden, which has lain for two months in a rather dishevelled state after our builder did some re-modelling, that we’d better hurry up and get it finished and tarted up all nicely before a satellite flies overhead and takes another photograph for Google Earth.

And perish the thought that everytime someone visits our place on Google Earth for the next five years, they’ll see a muddy bomb-site of a bog instead of the finely pruned and cared for floral wonderland we obviously all enjoy.

Yet another facet of the postmodem age we couldn’t foresee ten years ago.