So, Vera Lynn has died.

I suppose it’s too much to hope that that will mean the Second World War is finally over and will no longer be invoked by those trying to make some spurious point about contempoorary life. It was 75 years ago after all.

Oh, well.

A flavour of this sentiment colours this Pink Floyd Track from The Final Cut.

Pink Floyd: Vera

Perhaps not, then.

Lynn is repeatedly referred to as the Forces’ Sweetheart but I have it on good authority that isn’t quite true – at least for the rank and file. When she was on tour giving concerts she spent most of her time with officers. As a result, more popular among the ordinary soldier was the much lesser heralded Anne Shelton.

Still, print the legend, eh?

But at least Lynn didn’t forget the Fourteenth Army and actually visited Burma.

Most people – not least the BBC – no doubt opted for We’ll Meet Again to mark her passing. This one’s slightly less sentimental.

Vera Lynn: A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square

Vera Margaret Lynch (Vera Lynn;) 20/3/1917 – 18/6/2020. So it goes.

What with no football to fill your Saturday afternoons with dread or joy or … meh.

What with having to stay at home on a beautiful day.

What with wall-to-wall pieces on the TV cobbled from social media feeds or interviewing their so-called “stars”.

What with being depressed enough by the news.

Then after said news on Channel 4 tonight the announcer said next on was a film starring Vera Lynn! We’ll Meet Again, no less.

We’ve now definitely disappeared down a plughole into a bizarre altered reality.

Just to get it straight, guys. We are not in a real war. We’re not in any sort of re-enactment of the 1940s.

The UK is certainly not being led by people with any of the competence of those in the wartime coalition (even if one them was supposed to have “much to be modest about,” a remark belied by his subsequent achievements.)

This is a pandemic – an inevitable pandemic, one that was coming down the line sometime; they always do – for which leaders obsessed with lowering taxes and balancing budgets failed to prepare.

If you want a Second World War analogy, it is those same politicians who occupy the place of the 1930s appeasers of fascism. I hope the public remembers and doesn’t forgive them. History certainly won’t.