In France recently, we wished prices would go back in time. The best Muscadet we’ve ever had was from a café in Honfleur, one of the many tourist traps but serving a better meal than we can get at home. The house wine was delicious at a reasonable 10 euros a half-litre. But then, the wine is invariably good everywhere you go in France—even in the smallest back-street cafe frequented by students, to the grottiest tabac where the owner still has a Gauloise glued to his bottom lip, albeit unlit but still with an inch of ash that seems to defy gravity.

Doctor Who, Friends, F1 on the BBC, strikes, and the imminent disaster of another Tory government: nothing had changed when we got home. We expected to see Maggie Thatcher wheeled out to repeat her mantra the lady is not for turning. The English in Rouen had a good idea they perfected on Joan of Arc. Maggie was maybe not for turning but burning seemed a good idea to many Brits in the 1980s. Welcome back the 1980s and 90s, the era of Loads of Money when we could afford our Apple LaserWriter A3 printer.

In those days it cost the best part of two grand—and to replace it will cost the same, albeit in today’s money. We seldom need the printer now. We prefer to use an inkjet for its rapid speed printing of one or two pages, which is lucky because toner and spare parts are as rare as an original idea at Microsoft. Since Mac OS X 10.6’s arrival, the LaserWriter can be used only via printer sharing from our old G5.