We know too that on the Blairs' 18th wedding anniversary they married in 1980 in Blair's old college chapel

We know too that on the Blairs' 18th wedding anniversary (they married in 1980, in Blair's old college chapel in Oxford), they had dinner together at Chequers while, "My Cherie Amour" was played. Aah.That "aah factor" will grow stronger once a bump begins to show and Cherie's maternity clothes become the new national obsession. So far, Cherie and her aides have skilfully forged a path which has kept her out of trouble but still in credit with most of the electorate. At the same time, she has brought the names of many estimable dress designers - Ronit Zilkha, Paddy Campbell - to the country's attention.What would be truly impressive would be if she now guided the nation's eye to the value of caring and the issues that effect every family struggling with home and work, simply by the choices she makes.

Many congratulations, Mrs Blair - and please don't keep mum.. Whatever depths this column may have plumbed, it has never yet descended to the minutiae of the domestic life. No builders, babies' birthday parties or bed-wetting in this column. Lips sealed as to the nursery and the hearth, that's our motto. We make no meal of the pleasures or perils of breast-feeding in this space, no sir. That said, I do need to report that I spent an entire afternoon in the new Paperchase megastore on Tottenham Court Road last weekend, rolling in stationery so whisperingly seductive I was able to imagine no material use for it other than as wallpaper for a bordello. Which particular bordello I am not prepared to say, as that would infringe the self-imposed code of practice outlined above.

Besides, I have noticed before that I have only to endorse a store or a restaurant and the place is immediately packed to the rafters. And I wouldn't want that to happen to my favou- rite bordello. As for whether I bought anything at Paperchase, the answer is yes. Two watery plastic storage boxes each big enough to hold 100 Rexel No. 56 staplers, three million drawing pins, 14 rolls of fax paper, or a single sliced-loaf, depending on your office needs. But I will come back to those.Wishing to put my feet up after these exertions - for it can take hours on end to decide upon the right storage box once you have a mind to acquire one - I turned to Timothy Garton Ash's programme about the Czech Republic on BBC television. Half way through, it came to me in a flash the colour of the phosphorescent notebook I had also bought earlier, that both activities - shopping for stationery and Czech history - were in some deep and unexpected way related.

Translucent pencil cases and Vaclav Havel? Prague and Paperchase? I know, but if you can't yoke heterogeneous ideas by violence together, what kind of metaphysician are you?Futility, that was what the two experiences had in common. I don't mean that Timothy Garton Ash's programme was futile in itself, but futility, or something like futility - let's say the impossibility of human happiness - was its subject. The story it told was of what happens when an extravagantly literate, theatre-loving, deeply serious society wins that political freedom to which all its creative endeavours have been bent Crap - that's what happens Crap telly Crap music Crappy Kafka tours for crappy tourists. A crappy hunger for crappy entertainment where once there had been a rage for enlightenment. Crap.One strike of the freedom bells and the country goes from smart to stupid over night.