"They choke horses, don't they?"

It was a sunny afternoon, nearly as hot as the famed July of 2018. Clare was setting up a picnic table in the back garden when I exclaimed,

"Look what I found under the stairs!"

I had been looking for seldom-used barbecue coals.

"What?"

"It's a six-pack of those carbonated water bottles that Waitrose used to sell."

These had been unavailable since the great plastic panic of 2018-19.

"Wow! Bring one out and we'll have it with the wine."

Meanwhile, the neighbourhood protection drone cruised up our street on its stealthed rotors. Fully autonomous, it provided a complete suite of crime prevention and counter-terrorism functions.

A shadow crossed my path as I stepped into the brilliant sunlight of our back garden - a shadow followed by a great sky-shout:

"Stop! Put down the plastic bottle! Back away with your hands up!"

With a glance at the malevolent predator thirty feet above me, I slowly and carefully complied. An elderly man just a few months ago, crying defiance, had ineffectually held a similar plastic bottle to his chest. Next thing he was rolling on the ground in agony. Taser flechettes.

I needed a story for the SWAT team already on its way.

Sat on the ground with my hands on my head as the thing maintained its surveillance, I turned to Clare who had her hands over her mouth in horror.

"You remember back in 2018 there was that carbon dioxide shortage? When it turned out that they'd be using it to 'stun' animals before slaughter? As if suffocating an animal with carbon dioxide - like putting a plastic bag over its head - wasn't the cruellest thing, much more cruel than simply slitting its throat.

"I reckoned the animal rights people, the liberals, would be all over it. But not a peep. No moral high ground on choice of gas, you see. No kudos in nitrogen.

"But plastic - huh! - what's not to like?"

As my hands were taped behind me and I was marched off to the van, I figured most likely they would not make a terrorist rap stick.