If it was upsetting to war veterans, last Sunday's barely-there official commemoration of VE day presumably satisfied one leading non-participant. In an interview published on the same day, and headlined, "the war ended 60 years ago - get over it", the German ambassador, Thomas Matussek asserted that the British retain "an obsession with the Nazi period", while remaining, he alleged, lamentably ignorant about contemporary Germany. One would not want to exaggerate, and describe it as an ambassadorial obsession, but it has become something of a tradition for German dignitaries to get exercised on this point - so much so that they sometimes seem to forget how very many people, in contemporary Britain, never give the war a second thought. True, the 1995 VE day celebrations were extensive, joyful, and very well attended. But 10 years on, Tony Blair was too busy picking out a gift for Shaun Woodward to put on his doleful face, insert the crack in his voice, and lose a few minutes praying at the Cenotaph.  The ambassadors might also remember that, due to a prior engagement with Bono in Davos, Blair had to declare himself unavailable for a ceremony in January, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz. In this country, the ceremonies for VE and and VJ day are to be merged into an all purpose commemorative day on July 10.  The prime minister's conspicuous no-show in Moscow earlier this week was only the latest indication that the government has, to quite a remarkable degree, got over it. And yet Matussek rehearses the preoccupations of his predecessor, Gebhardt von Moltke (who asked if British history lessons stopped with the death of Hitler), and of Michael Naumann, the former culture minister, who complained in 1999 that Britain, alone in the world, "has decided to make the second world war a sort of spiritual core of its national self, understanding and pride".  Assuming he was correct about this decision, Naumann would surely allow that we seem to be having some trouble sticking to it. In the absence of any significant public recognition of VE day, which will be the last major anniversary witnessed by many survivors, it has been left to the BBC to draw attention to this shrinking generation. In Charles Wheeler's compelling Radio 4 series, Coming   Home, survivors of different nationalities, offer accounts of the aftermath of war - not only the arduous homecomings of 1945, but its legacy today. A woman whose husband was killed in action explained how she still dreams, if anything, she said, more vividly than before, of her husband's safe return.  Devoid of triumphalism, self-congratulation, Vera Lynn-impersonating mawk, Nazi-bashing, or whatever it is that vexes German ambassadors when they spend too long reading the Sun - the radio series makes for wrenching listening, suggesting that, far from getting over it, as a country, we still have much to learn about the war, the more pressingly while there are still survivors ready to talk. Or should we tell them to get over themselves? In one of Wheeler's programmes, a Japanese PoW, David Wilson, remembered how his father, a vicar, did not want to listen. "I was desperate to tell him what the Japanese were like." The vicar remained, his son said, utterly uncompassionate. "It was beneath his dignity to ask what conditions were like."  In the light of such accounts, Blair's recent reluctance to attend various important 60th-anniversary commemorations appears all the more mysterious. What explanation does he have, for spurning the ceremony at Auschwitz, and sending Jack Straw in his place? For using John Reid as a surrogate at the Cenotaph? For offering John Prescott to the statesmen's line-up in Red Square? If only we could attribute it to Blair's shrewd anticipation of Putin's Stalinist choreography. Or think of this and his other absences as the tactless mistakes of a busy man, rather than as distressing lapses of feeling and judgment. Although Blair is routinely said to have no sense of the past, his non-appearance alongside old allies in this piece of instant historical imagery seems an uncharacteristic oversight for a man who devotes so much thought to his place in history - which he seems to regard as a severe schoolmistress, who will one day tot up his marks and choose whether to damn him, forgive him, or award him some sort of special prize for achievement.  But perhaps, being ostensibly to commemorate the defeat of Nazism, the Moscow solemnities struck Blair as belonging to a part of history which does not interest him overmuch: that long, dark, dreary bit before he came along. We now appreciate that he prefers forward-looking 21st-century celebrations in a brand new dome filled with grateful tinies, to weepy, regressive events featuring Churchilliana and old women.  This perhaps explains why, instead of VE day, British veterans will have to be satisfied with a replacement event in July, scheduled for a day on which, 60 years ago, no one gathered to celebrate, because nothing in particular had happened. It may be a bit soon to claim we're really over Hitler and the Nazis, but even the German ambassador would have to admit, it's a start. <b>The most reluctant Lord Adonis</b>With the election behind us and tumble dryers now such a popular household convenience, many Guardian readers have been debating how best to dispose of their used clothes pegs. I entreat you to waste no time in sending them to Lord Adonis, Andrew as was, to help him through the profound revulsion he must feel on having to accept a peerage. As fans from Lord Adonis's newspaper punditry days will   recall, the new lord was once a determined reformer, who used regularly to denounce the creation of "a quango Lords", to insist that "an elected second chamber is needed to provide a necessary measure of parliamentary independence", and to urge abolition of all the old titles: "there is no public enthusiasm for lords, ladies and the other feudal relics".  The destruction of the lords would be, Lord Adonis proposed, "a blow against the snobbery and anti-democratic imagery which still permeates Britain". In its place, he wanted a senate, whose members would receive "not titles, but the simple designation, 'MS' (member of the Senate), after their unadorned name". But in 1997, bitterly advising readers to "forget    the dinner jackets and "call me Tony", Andy regretted that "New Labour looks set to uphold the  ancien rgime . . . politicians will still corner the lion's share of the juiciest plums - namely peerages".  He could not then have known - who could? - how many juicy plums Blair would also reserve for never-elected flatmates, favourites and paying clients such as Lord Powderject. But were he still in the punditry business, it seems a certainty that these shameless creatures, along with their preposterous new titles, would also have been treated to Andy's most condescending line in ridicule. "I had forgotten that Ted Short, a stalwart of the Wilson cabinets, was still with us", he once wrote. "This was easily done, for on retiring from the Commons, Short   disguised himself as Lord Glenamara. When the former Liberal prime minister HH Asquith performed this trick, reincarnating himself as Earl of Oxford, one wag said it was like a suburban villa calling itself Versailles."  We can only hope, now that Adonis himself has been reincarnated (title tbc), that he will continue to fight against the lordly affectations which have, in the past, brought on such ecstasies of disdain. "No one," Adonis once wrote, "likes being abolished, particularly when the perks of existence are as pleasant as those of a peer of the realm."  But I feel sure, don't you, that if we send him a big enough supply of clothes pegs, Mr Blair's favourite member of the  sans culottes will prove the exception to this rule?