Of course it's been building for a while. For a few years now, every restaurant in central London has been fully booked for late dinners on 31 December 1999; and predictions of worldwide economic collapse, as the 'millennium' bug makes millions of computerised businesses a hundred years out of date, has practically entered modern folklore. Artists and architects argue endlessly over the Millennium Dome; there is grief and glory in dozens of planning offices as applications to the Lottery Fund for millennium projects are granted or denied; and quite a few of us older people are wondering exactly what is in the Blue Peter time capsule.