Yesterday afternoon, as I was standing on a platform at London Bridge station, there came over the tannoy the following important announcement:

“Due to recent wet weather, customers are advised that surfaces may be slippery.”

I know this isn’t as bad as endlessly repeated warnings that our bags may be blown up by the “security services” should we let our attention be distracted for a nanosecond. Or that we are liable to have a magazine of dumb-dumb bullets emptied into our heads by jumpy plain-clothes police officers if we so much as look the slightest bit shifty. But why oh why disturb the tranquility of a Spring afternoon in central London with such pathetic expressions of the bleedin’ obvious?