Peter Rhodes on two irritating letters, a masterclass in swearing and counting the days to war

If you believe history repeats itself, start counting days. Thirty seven days elapsed between the openly hostile act of the Sarajevo assassination in 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War. If we take the first openly hostile act of this year's Russia-Ukraine stand-off to be the cyber attack on Ukraine of January 14, then 37 days takes us to February 20.

However, I take comfort from the view that while historians tend to repeat themselves, history rarely does.

Incidentally, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, we were on such good terms with Russia that Russian observers were invited to visit Nato exercises and there was even serious talk of Russia one day joining Nato. Strange but true.

Two letters arrive from officialdom. One treats me as though I'm a toddler, the other assumes I have a doctorate in computer programming.

The first letter, which has caused much confusion among BT customers, begins: “We're updating your online security to Norton.” Yet the very next sentence carries the instruction: “Update your security package to Norton.” So who's doing this updating, them or us? The notes, in tiny print hardly visible to the naked eye, warn that before downloading anything, “you acknowledge that you have read, understood and agreed to the BT EULA and the Norton Lifelock EULA.” Seriously, does anybody ever read, understand or agree to such things?

I wrestled with my computer for a while and I believe, despite some scary “server error” alerts, that I've done the update. But, like the great mass of Joe Public, I really haven't a clue what I've done, or why, or whether it will cost me anything. In a world dominated by big tech, the customer is treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed on, well, you know the rest.

The second letter was from the NHS informing me my latest bowel-cancer screening was fine, before lapsing into nursery talk to describe symptoms to look out for in future. These include “blood in your poo (faeces)” and “a lump in your abdomen (tummy.)” Can there really be a single NHS patient who doesn't know what faeces or abdomens are? Being treated like children is enough to make any mature grown-up swear. Here goes (acknowledgements to Flanders & Swann): “Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!” That feels better.