If I must wear a face mask, I'll do so with a look of ironic detachment | Zoe Williams

I can't help being sceptical about government rules, but I will cover up when I'm told to. Over to you, eyes

Its not only ethnonationalists who myth-make around the second world war - any idiot can make use of mass destruction for parable purposes.

One of the favourite tales of my kind of idiot was about saucepans. In 1940, the story goes, Lord Beaverbrook, the press baron turned minister of aircraft production, asked the homemakers of Britain to donate their pots and pans, because he needed aluminium for the war effort. Except that was not what he needed: what he needed was for everyone to take the war seriously and make peace with the depredations. This would be best achieved, he thought, by divesting everyone of their colander and spare omelette pan.