Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25626-20151023184552/@comment-21519-20151026213135

I hadn't thought to look at Bevin's DOD. Actually, now that I'm noticing it, quite a few of Attlee's front bench team are coming up on their expiration dates. Not a young man's game, apparently.

So here's an idea for a scene: Daisy opens the next book reflecting on how, after Paris went up, the government evacuated London, fearing it was next. Everyone else assumes the same, and no one's in much of a mood for socializing. Toward the end of a particularly quiet night, what's-his-name admits to Daisy that the USAF is not at all confident it will be able to save London if and when the Bulls show up.

From a back table, a tipsy stranger turns to his mate and stage-whispers:

"You see, Herb, what did I tell you! We can't count on that lot to fight our battles for us. A great power needs to stand on its own two feet at times like these."

"You'll get no argument from me, Clem, not anymore" says his companion. "I can see now that poor old Ernie knew what he was about after all."

"Of course," the first man flashes a grin Daisy's way, "Now the jig is up." He lifts a wig off his head, revealing Clement Attlee's bald pate. "The young lady now knows we've been using her establishment for our clandestine Cabinet meetings."

"Give her some credit, Clem!" Herbert Morrison is peeling a fake mustache off his lip. "Surely she recognized us before now, didn't you, Miss? We're quite famous, you know."

Daisy chews on a fingernail for a moment as she tries to place him, then:

"Do you boys work for Sir Winston?"

I'm only half-kidding, by the way. There is no British equivalent to Kyubyshev; the island is far too small for that. So Government ministers traipsing about the countryside incognito is not nearly so ridiculous as it would sound in a country with a larger interior. And if that's what's going to happen, a modest small-town pub is exactly the sort of place they would gather. Thus we'd have an organic, if not entirely likely, way to get a regular, unimportant, civilian POV involved in scenes that will affect a significant portion of the story as a whole. I like it.