But even the nasally incompetent could have worked out that, during the winter of 1975-6, something smelled rotten in the capital; what alarmed me was a stranger, more personal stink: the whiff of personal danger, in which I discerned the presence of a pair of treacherous, retributive knees … my first intimation that an ancient conflict, which began when a love-crazed virgin switched name-tags, was shortly to end in a frenzy of treason and snippings.