What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?
Next morning I set off early. I took it easy. On the way I visited Thomas Hardy’s cottage at Higher Bockhampton. Muck spreading was in progress and Higher Bockhampton and even the interior of Hardy’s cottage reeked of well-marinaded cow manure. After that I walked the three miles of footpaths and roads Hardy took to school in Dorchester and back — part of the way was along a Roman road — then I resumed my journey across Wessex. It was a lovely day and I felt unusually happy.
To reach Lymington I had to drive across Bournemouth. I entered the outskirts of Bournemouth at rush hour. The roads were gridlocked. I rang the mechanic to ask for directions and to warn him I might be a bit late. He answered his phone in the same patient, calm manner and gave me clear and well-rehearsed directions. He’d be there until about five thirty, he said.
At 5.15 I rang again. I was in the waiting room of the accident and emergency department of the Royal Bournemouth hospital, I said. My car had overheated. I’d pulled over, opened the bonnet and foolishly unscrewed the radiator cap. The resulting 15-foot geyser of boiling water had removed the skin from my forearm. Second-degree burns, apparently. I wasn’t going to make it by 5.30, I told him, but I hoped to be there first thing in the morning if there was nothing seriously wrong with the car, and I could drive with my left arm in a sling. He registered neither surprise nor sympathy, but he thanked me politely for letting him know.
I was discharged from A&E late in the evening and checked in to a hotel. Next morning I found the car, refilled the radiator with water and continued my journey across Bournemouth. I was able to drive with one arm in a sling because the car is an automatic.
At midday I rang him to tell him I was waiting for an AA patrol to arrive. It wasn’t looking good, I said. I’d driven about half a mile and the car had overheated again. If the cause was a blown gasket, I said, I was going to walk away from the car and catch a train home. Did he want an old BMW for spares or scrap by any chance? This taciturn, unemotional man advised patience. I should see what the AA man said, he said. It might not be that serious.
It wasn’t. The AA man diagnosed an air-lock between the coolant system and the reservoir. He bled it out, I signed the chit, problem solved. I rang the workshop to tell him my good news. He answered the phone with his customary calm and measured recital of his six-digit phone number. BMWs are prone to air-locks, he said. Where was I now? I was still in Bournemouth, I said. I had another nine miles to go, he said. He repeated the directions, which involved a Waitrose, three roundabouts, a stone bridge and a nursery.
Three quarters of an hour later I rang him again, this time from the back seat of a police patrol car. My number plate had been noted at a checkpoint, fed into the computer and my lack of a valid MOT certificate had come to light. I’d been stopped and handed a fixed-penalty notice for £60. I’d rung, I said, because the policemen were standing outside the car debating whether I should be allowed to continue with a bald tyre. So I might not get there today either.
Well, he said, today he’d be at the workshop till five. And if I couldn’t make it across Bournemouth by then, I should also know that he was going on holiday at the end of July for ten days. Ecstatic laughter in the background told me that this constituted a perhaps rare flash of levity from a man not noted for letting his feelings run away with him.
Keir Starmer wasted no time on entering 10 Downing Street in appointing his cabinet that same day. But taking longer are the junior ministerial posts – some still vacant – and the appointment of special advisers. Such aides often get a bad rep around Westminster, thanks, in part to the mythology of The Thick Of
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