Based on a dream I had on the morning of Friday 10 April 2026...
{{ London, October 1964, late evening. A sudden and intense shower. The Rolls-Royce/Bentley showroom by St James's Park Underground station, round the corner from Victoria Street. Four men are sheltering from the pouring rain just inside the entrance to an exclusive gallery of shops next to the showroom. Pride of place on the showroom floor that month happened to be an immaculately restored 1938 Rolls-Royce 25/30 Shooting Brake with coachwork by Hooper & Co. of London. A man in his 40s is admiring it through the curved plate-glass window. He'd been in the pub for much of the evening and was heading home, waiting at a nearby bus stop when he was forced to seek shelter from the downpour. Still staring at the distinguished lines of the vehicle, he says out loud to no one in particular: "Cor – any of you chaps see your way clear to extending me a loan for that beauty?"
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| Image generated by Google Gemini |
Totally unexpectedly, he receives a blow to the side of his head followed by a punch in the gut. As he doubles over, a knee comes up to meet his face with a hard crack. He falls to the ground. His assailant is joined by two other men, who clearly knew each other though had hitherto not been speaking among themselves. Lying on the pavement, he feels a well-polished leather shoe pressing lightly on his cheek, turning this way and that.
"Let this be the very last time you address your social betters with vulgar impertinence," said a calm voice above him. "May this be a lesson to you" said another upper-class voice, kicking him hard in the stomach. Another shoe is aimed at his groin. Someone treads on his hand. The beating suddenly stops as the three men walk briskly away, hail a passing black cab, and leave the man to slowly get to his feet. }}
[At this point the dream fades. What follows is a fictional follow-up, partially imagined drifting in and out of my hypnopompic state before I finally woke up.]
He staggered across Parliament Square and went to New Scotland Yard to report the assault. The desk sergeant noted that the man standing in front of him with a bloodied face had been drinking. Not the first of the night and far from the last. Yet when the victim mentioned the name of the pub, the Two Chairmen on Old Queen Street, the sergeant recalled a phone call from the landlord reporting a disturbance earlier the same evening and requesting the presence of a police officer. However, it was not until after the assault had been reported did a constable finally turn up at the pub, just after last orders had been called. The PC took a statement from the publican, who gave detailed descriptions of the three men suspected of the bus-stop assault, as well as corroborating the presence of the assaulted man in his pub for much of the evening.
It turns out that the three assailants were all aristocrats. Landed gentry. Among them, their ring-leader, the eldest son of the 8th Earl of Malmeseley. They had been drinking heavily, round after round, getting increasingly vociferously aggressive.
Earlier that day, Harold Wilson had been to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen had asked him to form a government. This followed the Labour Party winning the previous day's general election by the tightest of margins – a majority of four seats. The news had brought the three men to boiling point, all convinced of the existential threat to their way of life posed by a new Labour government.
"I evaded capture by the Japanese in Malaya in 1941. Fought alongside local guerillas. Survived disease and constant risk of betrayal in the jungle. Returned to London in late 1945. My family home, used to billet American airmen, you see, had been bulldozed to extend the runway of the nearby air base. Three hundred years of history reduced to a pile of rubble."
He had spent the next 19 years in a mounting state of anger. Anger at how the natural order of the world had suddenly changed. Increasingly he was finding himself being disobeyed, disrespected, ignored. A bunch of insolent nobodies were in charge of Britain. Men who'd not cut the mustard managing the branch office of a provincial building society are taking decisions that determine the direction of government policy! And now with Wilson at Number Ten, they'll back – in force – emboldened. Back in the ministries. Back in the county halls. "NOBODIES!" he screamed at the saloon bar. "UTTER NOBODIES!" When asked by the landlord to keep their voices down, they turned on him denouncing him as an undercover socialist and a tool of Wilsonite Labourism.
"Grammar-school interlektuals. Jumped-up mediocrities who hadn't even come across Thucydides or Ovid let alone read them in the original. Look at those despicable graspers in their gabardine raincoats checking their football pools in the Daily Express. Ready to open the floodgates to West Indians and Asians who by way of gratitude would vote Labour for generations."
The aristocrat's son was in full flow, all restraint washed away by glass after glass of claret which followed the initial gin-and-tonics.
"Nowhere's safe!" he yelled. "Nowhere to hide from the county planner's office or from the taxman's rapacious claws! Housing estates and orbital roads, television aerials, electricity pylons, new towns and airports springing up everywhere, blighting our once-beautiful island. Motor-cars for all? By-passes, lay-bys and rights-of-way? Television and cake! Egalitarian FILTH! I SAY LEAVE ENGLAND AS SHE IS! I cannot tolerate change! Nazis? Brownshirts? Jumped-up lower-middle class scum! Bolsheviks? Communists? Even worse – common labourers! Peasants! Illiterate hordes! BUT THE WORST OF ALL ARE THE GRAMMAR-SCHOOL EGALITARIAN SOCIALISTS FRESH FROM SOME MIDLANDS UNIVERSITY! THESE PEOPLE HAVE NO APTITUDE TO RULE! IT IS UNNATURAL FOR THEM TO RULE! It takes four years at prep school, seven years at Harrow or Eton and three years at Oxford or Cambridge to know how to RULE! Above all, it takes generations to know how to RULE! IT IS INNATE!" roared the son of the 8th Earl of Malmeseley, somewhat contradicting himself. "They must know their place! They must DEFER to their BETTERS!"
It was at this point that the landlord phoned for the police. The complaint was duly noted down; no action, however, was taken.
The subject of the beating, Kenneth Snoddy, 48 of Chalk Farm, London NW3, had also spent that Friday evening drinking, with several of his colleagues from the Colonial Office. There was much chatter about their ministry being merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office, maybe even with the Foreign Office itself! Rumours, of course, but with a new Labour government in power, far more likely to go ahead. How would this play out? Lots of talk of internal politics. Who would rise to permanent under-secretary of state in a merged department? Would jobs be lost? Would there be promotion opportunities? Ken Snoddy supped up his fifth pint, bade farewell to his colleagues and set off to catch the bus home. Three pairs of eyes watched him go.
The case did not make it into the papers. Lord Malmesley had a quiet word at the club with Lord Camrose; the Press Association's court reporter assigned to cover the 8th Earl's son's appearance at the magistrate's court was given another case to cover at the last minute, and the story of his acquittal didn't make the day's agency wire feeds.
This time two years ago:
Early blossom, Jakubowizna
(Early indeed! Currently. no sign of apple or cherry blossom, let alone dandelions!)
Ealing under blue skies
Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel
This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw 1935: a 3D depiction of a city that's no longer with us
This time 14 years ago:
Cats and awareness
This time 16 years ago:
Why did this happen?
This time 17 years ago:
Britain's grey squirrels turning red
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