A Spectator's Notebook
THE DAYS are past when editors permitted their more egregious columnists to announce in August that simply nobody was left in London. But it is a fact, now that most of the multi- tudinous somebodies who used to be invisible to the gossip writers can afford to go on holiday, that Londoners are thinner on the ground than ever before. I have never known an August when the traffic was so light, the pavements so easily negotiated —it is like a month of Sundays, with tourists in possession of Piccadilly and the Cenotaph surrounded by cameras. The other afternoon at three o'clock I strolled across Whitehall in a leisurely manner without seeing either bus or taxi on the farthest horizon, got myself willy-nilly into a few snapshots, and turned into the comparative turmoil of Downing Street, where a crowd of holidaymakers were staring hopefully at the grubby little frontage of No. 10. A man in a light grey suit took off his hat, rang the bell and slipped rapidly round the open door. This occasioned a great deal of speculation, and the couple beside whom I paused fell to disputing whether he was Field-Marshal Montgomery or a messenger. When I came back that way a quarter of an hour later, I saw them in earnest conversation with a smiling constable. I think our policemen are wonderful.
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