Bit of a strange week. The minister’s special adviser, Bullingdon, called me into Cockspur Street. “Down to the War Room,” he thundered as soon as I arrived. “And remember, you’ve seen nothing and heard nothing. Understand?” I nodded.
As the basement doors locked behind us, a scared-looking little oik stepped out of the gloom to take my coat. “One of the Big Society kids,” explained B. “On loan from Liverpool.”
At first I couldn’t see anything. Then I gasped. I’d encountered some weird things at Oxford but nothing like this. Hanging upside down from a bar by his knees, with his arms secured and an orange in his mouth, was the secretary of state. “Thinking,” explained Bullingdon. “Don’t disturb him.”
Then I saw a chap dressed only in gym shorts, his face and chest smeared with a red substance. The minister! “Don’t worry,” he grinned. “It’s fox blood, not human!” Behind him, four senior officials sat before a life-size bronze automaton of Thatcher, her face illuminated in the flames.
“Cuts, cuts, cuts,” they intoned, “cuts that cleanse, cuts that heal.” Then to my horror her metal jaws fell open and she spat blood out on to the floor. “The She-god has spoken,” cried the minister, falling to his knees to examine the pool. “The MLA must go!”
Bullingdon dragged me into the next room. To my relief it was a regular office. “Welcome Augustus,” said the permanent sec. “You have witnessed our strategic planning process. And now we want you to become director of a consortium of all the annoying little national museums. It’s the first step to getting rid of them altogether.”
That was it. I staggered out into street, blinking in the daylight.
