My oldest friend was talking about her next door neighbours from when she was growing up and what they are up to now. I knew them a bit as well. I remember their dog. “Yes,” said my friend, “the boys were obsessed with World War II and that’s why they called the dog Rommel.” Until that very moment I had believed Rommel to be a perfectly normal name for a dog. It’s not like I hadn’t heard of Rommel the Desert Fox but until then, these two things had lived in different corners of my brain. I would say, I knew Rommel the dog first.