Be that as it may, a surging turnout: Lucy herself favoured an unusual hair-tint and wraparound smoked lenses, there being more than a few matrons regular at such junkets whom she prefers to avoid – isn’t it spooky how those most prone to crying “We must all stick together” are the very same to whom we would least care to cling. Our own Chris, no less, delivered himself of a brief speech and proved quite the orator, the result no doubt of all that Cicero beaten into him (quite properly) at an early age.
Would that the other aspirant Catos had been so eloquent – or as succinct. John F, needless to say, nowhere to be seen: we wouldn’t put it past him to be a republican. And on the subject of republicans, Lucy was especially pleased to note the number of Americans present (Mr Joseph Parisi from Chicago for one, in a remarkable tuxedo), no doubt repenting of their unfilial behaviour with our national drink all those years ago in Boston. Apparently Neil Young has included a ‘version’ of the National Anthem on his latest long-playing record, and just the other day a crazed conspiracy theorist buttonholed your fairweather blonde on the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, babbling that poor President Obama is no more than a puppet jerked by the House of Windsor . . . Straws in the wind? When better than the Jubilee Year for an indulgent parent to welcome back the prodigal superpower to her capacious, forgiving imperial bosom?
