Skip to content
A train driver is dead. Eighty-nine souls are injured. And Lord Starmer spent his Friday evening telephoning cabinet ministers to ask if they still liked him. This Author does not know which of these facts is the more alarming, though she suspects the nation has already formed a view.
The collision occurred shortly after five o’clock on Friday afternoon, just south of Bedford, when one East Midlands Rail Carriage Company service – the 16:40 from Corby – struck the 15:50 from Nottingham, which had stopped upon the tracks. Passengers describe the carriage as though a bomb had detonated within it. One described a woman with a completely snapped leg; another could not move his neck and lay upon the floor while fellow passengers held him still. A lady travelling to celebrate her birthday in the Capital opened her eyes to find blood everywhere. Eleven persons suffered very serious injuries, and twenty-two more were seriously hurt. The train operator has suspended services to and from St Pancras Grand Terminus for the weekend. This Author asks that the Gentle Reader hold the deceased driver’s family in their thoughts – for there is nothing witty to be said of grief, and she will not attempt it.
Meanwhile, at the Prime Minister’s Residence, a rather different sort of wreckage was being catalogued. Lord Starmer insists he will not “walk away” from his office – a commendable fighting spirit, or a magnificent refusal to read the room, depending upon one’s disposition. Lord Burnham won the Makerfield by-election by a resounding margin on Friday, and his allies have very graciously declined to give media interviews over the weekend, so as to give the Prime Minister time to “reflect.” How thoughtful. How generous. How entirely like handing a condemned man a comfortable chair in which to contemplate his fate.
Lady Alexander, the Transport Secretary, is said to have suggested Lord Starmer set a timetable to leave office – though her spokesperson assures us it was a “private conversation” and nothing shall be revealed. Lady Reeves offered her full support, which in political circles is roughly equivalent to a ship’s doctor pronouncing the patient stable whilst the vessel sinks. Lady Mahmood and the Prime Minister have reportedly not spoken since Lord Burnham‘s victory. The cabinet meeting on Tuesday promises to be the most dramatic gathering in the corridors of power since someone last forgot to order the biscuits. This Author shall have her lorgnette polished and ready.
In news that this Saturday has briefly tempered the nation’s suffering: the heat has eased. Marginally. The Meteorological Office reports that Friday’s temperatures – which exceeded thirty degrees Celsius in parts – will give way today to a slightly more bearable twenty-seven or twenty-eight in the south-east. North Britain, the Northern Province, and the Principality will be cooler still. Do not celebrate too heartily, however, for Sunday brings a return of the heat, and an amber warning of extreme temperatures is expected from Monday. This Author notes that the Kingdom has apparently arranged its infrastructure, its politics, and its railway network to fail simultaneously under warm conditions. It is, one supposes, a form of national consistency.
Speaking of infrastructure defeated by temperature: Chepstow’s Grade I listed Wye Bridge – two hundred and ten years old and thoroughly distinguished – has partially reopened to pedestrians and cyclists, having been closed since October after cracks were discovered in its structural beams. The good news is that one may now walk across it. The less good news is that engineers have advised it must close again should temperatures rise above thirty degrees Celsius. It will be recalled that yesterday’s temperatures exceeded thirty degrees. The forecast for Sunday in Chepstow is twenty-eight degrees, and twenty-nine on Monday. This Author does not know whether to laugh or to send the bridge a warming compress and a note of encouragement. A 210-year-old structure that closes in the heat and cold alike is, one feels, simply a very old gentleman who has earned the right to be particular about the weather.
And finally, for those who required further evidence that the Kingdom contains multitudes: at a zoo near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire – the very establishment this Author noted earlier this week for its unfortunate crocodile incident – a three-year-old boy remains in a critical but stable condition two days after he was found in the crocodile enclosure. A thirty-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and released on bail. The proprietor’s wife, one Tracey Johnson, leapt into the enclosure to rescue the child, sustaining no injury herself. Her bravery is beyond question. The crocodiles, for their part, are fifteen feet below the raised viewing platform, behind steel mesh fencing, and were described by a visitor as “largely motionless” mere minutes before the incident. This Author has many questions, none of them suitable for polite publication, and trusts that the small boy makes a full and swift recovery.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.