Last week I wrote about violent words, such as “smash”, that have invaded restaurant menus. It is interesting how words that originally described great big scary things lose their power when they become attached to more mundane things, such as potatoes.

One of these words is “invasion”. We have stopped hearing constantly about the invasion of the polyphagous shot hole borer beetle, which was widely predicted to wipe out all the old trees in SA. Either it has called a ceasefire or perhaps people have grown bored of hearing about it...