AS I adjust my periscope and observe the world situation, I see to my west a man with hand-knitted hair feeling under his desk for a button that isn’t there. To my south-east – way furth of Cockenzie and Humbie – an endearingly comical-looking fellow with spare chins folding down into his pyjama top is waving his little toy rocket about.

Donald waves his rocket back. How sweet to see the bairns playing like this with weapons of mass destruction, just like you and I used to play Racists and Indians.

Events in the ongoing war of inanities between US President Donald Trump and North Korean wrong ’un Yong-Un took a comically ominous turn this week when the two children started boasting about their respective toys.

Kim of that ilk said: “The US should know that the button for nuclear weapons is on my table.” Yep, it’s right next to the one that opens up the floor into a pit of piranhas for errant advisers and other family members.

Donald, in turn, took to Twitter, declaring: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

Funnily enough, as well as seeing this behaviour as childlike, top observers adduced that it was a display of Toblerone. Sorry, testosterone. Always get these confused.

Donald, for his part, shouldn’t have much Toblerone left at his age. Indeed, sources say that, as his tiny hands typed the claim that his button still works, his younger missus Melania stood behind him mutely mouthing: “No, it doesn’t.” Apart from which, folk online said the button was actually quite small and it was only his hands that made it look big.

But the President doesn’t have a button. He has a biscuit. If you find that difficult to digest, let me explain. The President’s nuclear starter kit is contained in an ordinary-looking black briefcase known as the “emergency satchel”, something one imagines Richmal Crompton’s Just William might carry for his spare catapult, cream buns and pet mouse.

However, rather than being carried by a scruffy schoolboy, the bearer of this satchel (tied to his wrist by a leather leash) is a pistol-bearing military aide who accompanies Just Donald hither and yon. The contents of this briefcase include a 75-page “black book” outlining the President’s nuclear options and, herein, lies the great hope for the world: it’ll take him about three years to read it.

But the main thing in the emergency satchel is the so-called “biscuit”, a gadget containing columns of numbers and letters into which the President must enter a memorised code, again buying the world time as he puts in his date of birth, first primary school and mother’s maiden name to no avail.

Thus the biscuit, featuring the President’s stubby little finger on his Hobnob while, in North Korea, wee Jammie Dodger Kim laughs his head off and dances about to Elton John (“And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time – Rocket Man!”).

Jim Hines, a Democratic Congressman, suggested that the Trump tweets were a gift to Freudians, who reduce everything to sex in their academic journal, The Daily Star. If you’re unfamiliar with Freudianism, here’s an explanation with knobs on. The human mind is made up of three parts: the id, the ego and the superego.

The id is made up of animal desires, the superego is the moral conscience, and the ego mediates the two. It’s a good formula for characters in TV shows or literature. Thus, in Last of the Summer Wine, you have Compo the id, Foggy the superego, and Clegg the ego. In The Wind in the Willows, Toad is the id, Badger the superego, and Ratty the ego.

Donald Trump is 70 per cent id, 25 per cent ego, and five per cent superego. Kim is pretty much the same. So what we have is a Mexican stand-off (Mexicans: “Don’t drag us into it!”) between Compo and Mr Toad. And, to continue the Freudian theme, each of them has a very small nocturnal mammal. Or Badger.

Incidentally, if you like the Summer Wine theme, feel free to cast Theresa May as Nora Batty. None of which casts much light on the situation as regards world peace.

It’s an intriguing thought that you probably find more diplomacy on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, Edinburgh’s Rose Street or Aberdeen’s Union Street on a Saturday night than you do on the world stage at present. Folk hoped the US President’s secret service agents had a contingency plan, but leaked papers reveal this simply consists of them shouting: “Just leave it, Donald. He’s not worth it.”

In the meantime, I lower my periscope and hunker down in my bunker. Please, I pray, someone take the Toblerone off the boys.