The beach, deserted even on summer afternoons, looks as if it is under permanent shark alert.
They grew up in a state of permanent "red alert" which deregulated the cortisones in their brain chemistry.
How long before society reaches a state of self-monitoring, self-censoring "offence-Stasi", with everyone on permanent red alert?
And yet the world still bristles with 30,000 or so nuclear arms, many on permanent high alert, while the ranks of nuclear powers keep growing.
On such occasions, tradition dictates that the travelling British press is on permanent snub alert, parsing each point of protocol for hints that the Special Relationship is turning quotidian.So far, we are snub-free.
The terrorist threat level is on permanent red alert and the CIA is so suffused with terror-paranoia that it subjects a US war hero and its own agents alike to surveillance, harassment and even polygraph tests.
After all, with tens of thousands of American troops now perched on permanent high alert across the DMZ, there was no gainsaying North Korea's strategic significance as a Cold War buffer state, and no question that, despite Kim's posturing, he would retain the vital support of Moscow and Beijing.
Permanent spoiler alert: We simply can't imagine anyone other than Donald J. Trump ever occupying the top spot.
