Grant Schapps visited our gym this morning!

And said, ‘You’re on a pre-war footing chaps, best get ready.’

So what was the talk around the water cooler about, amidst all that sweating and huffing and puffing?

You can imagine. What it meant to be on a pre-war footing. What it meant to be a member of Dad’s Army. What ration books meant. What conscription meant. How we needed to think about getting our nearest and dearest signed up to get ready for the hun or the jerries or whoever it was who was in our line of fire these days.

Not that anyone could be certain about who was on our line of fire these days.  Was it the Muslims, the Jews, the Gentiles or the EU?  Probably the EU, considering the EU are the fault of pretty much everything these days. 

When push comes to military shove, and we’re going to be on a pre-war footing, its best we know whose line of fire we’re in and whose feet we want to stand on.

Bearing in mind our gym is in Lincolnshire, perhaps it’s not surprising that the water cooler talk easily accepted the notion of being on a pre-war footing, especially after that General somewhere down south remarked that we should be thinking about conscripting all those able-bodied persons who could lend a foot to whatever war effort we were about to embark on. 

Being in Lincolnshire, the armed forces are prevalent in our gyms, supermarkets and pubs, so they probably have one up on the rest of us mere civvies who are hoping to avoid another war effort, especially one which is going to involve a lot of feet being stood on.