Round trip

Two buses a week leave from the bus stop at the lonely crossroads on Thursday and Saturday. I’d caught the Thursday one as the first leg of a journey up to Westminster, to attend The Spectator’s summer party. Dressed in a dark suit and party tie, and attended by a herd of heavily pregnant cows browsing for herbs at the roadside, I was an object of curiosity not only for the other passengers, but also for the driver, a genial Geordie, who had assumed the mantle of expedition spokesman as well as pilot. ‘Getting married?’ he said, as I stepped aboard.

I’d got myself into a party mood by spending an hour in the National Portrait Gallery, looking at eminent Victorians. Gladstone, Disraeli, Salisbury, Joseph Chamberlain, Randolph Churchill, T.H. Huxley, Charles Darwin: I moved from one gilt-framed oil painting to another, wondering at the dignity and moral purpose which the various artists had cleverly captured or concocted. Then I wandered down Whitehall and went to the party, where almost immediately I was introduced to our current Prime Minister. With one eye shut, I could see him on the wall alongside his predecessors: his shirt and jacket collars a perfect fit for his neck, his scissored haircut, and that attractive glint of personal modesty in his eyes. I was about to observe that he had a big job on his hands, when he adroitly sidestepped the possibility of political small talk by saying that he reads The Spectator, and likes to start at the back, where he particularly enjoys the Dear Mary problem page.

I must have then blinked, because the next time I looked the Prime Minister was ten feet away talking to someone else, and I was speaking to Taki.