THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
Budget Day was quite the balmiest day of this year so far. At exactly the time Tony Barber rose in the Commons, I saw a girl driving down Gower Street in an opened convertible, her hair streaming behind her like an advertisement for spring or for better days ahead. The softness of the air, despite its windy movement, was most pleasant; and it was impossible not to be infected by a spirit of equability. Earlier, barmaids had been cheerful 'Time' had been called with tolerance, lunchtime guests from City, Temple and Chicago had departed in pleas- ant mood. The dread unemployment figilres, the knowledge we had of an economy in its most depressed state, the feel we knew of matters awry—dispelled, all of it, by what Robin Day called 'the glorious spring sun- shine'. He, Day that is, clad in an enormously unnecessary fur-lined garment, expecting more discontented winter.
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