My husband is fond of an old pub in Northumberland called the Red Lion, once a drovers’ inn, it says. In fact my husband is fond of lots of pubs, many of them unattractive. The red (or gules) lion of the Scottish royal banner is rampant, ‘rearing up’.

This rampancy is connected in complicated ways with the ramping up of virus tests and such things, about which the government is forever talking.