David Fuller's view I know what caused it, if you're interested. Despite the wisenheimers' head-scratching, garment- rending, finger-wagging and tooth-sucking, I actually do know the reason that out of the clear blue sky we were afflicted with a Biblical, mythological, medieval plague of rioting.

(Don't you agree, by the way, that of all the retrospective experts' tropes and tics, it's the tooth-sucking that's the most offensive?)

It was all the fault of the clear blue sky. It was hubris what done it. We'd actually begun to believe our luck had changed, that we'd cracked the fate thing, the auguries were all promising.

We're not in the euro area -- phew. We've dodged the U.S. downgrade. All the government's "cuts with care" seem to be slowly working, or at least not not working. There's a scintilla of growth. The coalition government felt grown up, the Olympics construction is coming in ahead of time and budget, even the bloody old weather was good. And England is beating India in the test series, we're to about become top nation at cricket, and that's never happened in living memory.

We were lulled and gulled and played for fools, beginning to think we could be winners. It was fatal. The national temperament is pessimistic fortitude. Our factory setting is dull stoicism. We are the nation of good losers, of make do and make tea.

Nemesis came as a letter from Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to resign, as he'd lost the trust of his people. Iran offered solidarity to the young freedom fighters in Tottenham. In other circumstances it might have been funny. Seen through a smoking high street, it was galling. But when the politicians got up to the podium and barked that we weren't dealing with protesters, they were common criminals, and would feel the full force of the law, well, it sounded familiar. It sounded like Syria's Bashar al-Assad.