The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun.
They said they would campaign for an exit unless the prime minister toughened his negotiating stance on issues such as national sovereignty.
Mabey's forthcoming The Cabaret of Plants argues for "a new language" with which to accommodate the "selfhood" of plants: "metaphor and analogy may be the best we can do, but they will have to be toughened by an acceptance that the plant world is a parallel life system to our own, intimately connected with it, but still existentially different".
Industry is being told to cut nitrogen oxides emissions by 90%; the speed limit on main roads will be lowered to 55mph in May; vehicle exhaust testing will be toughened up; and the use of building equipment, and, indeed, mowers, will be banned until noon from 2005.
Schools blame Britain's newly toughened visa requirements for non-EU students.
The House also toughened the Senate bill's punishments of executives.
Fiscal rules have been toughened, but creditor countries have resisted any sharing of liabilities.
Meanwhile America, which has announced visa bans on 20 members of Ukraine's government, has toughened its own rhetoric.
A policeman died in Cairo after being hit on the head by a rock.Shocked by the scale of protest, police toughened and broadened their response.
That appalled many Indians, who are already concerned by China's close alliance with Pakistan and perceived meddling in Nepal, Sri Lanka and other areas of traditional Indian sway.America has toughened its approach to China recently.
During the 1980s and 1990s, when Brazil was suffering from hyperinflation and struggling to pay its foreign debts, Eliezer Batista, who put in two stints as chairman of Vale between 1961 and 1986 as well as a brief spell as minister for mines and energy, "thought, like many Brazilian fathers, that maybe Brazil would not make it".Prospecting for gold around the world toughened his son up.
