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.
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