For more than 40 years we’ve lived in a beautiful, listed, Cotswold stone, Stonesfield slate-roofed farmhouse in Oxfordshire. The trouble is it’s an ex-Blenheim house, within earshot of the palace, and the current duke is having Potus — that unlovely acronym for ‘President of the United States’ — to dinner. Locals are muttering about this World Heritage Site being used to fete a pantomime villain. On Thursday we’re invited to a friend’s 70th birthday party at the Athenaeum, and there’s also a press night at the National Theatre. I wonder whether we’ll be able to manage either of these, as our village is almost certain to be in lockdown then.
If I were a little paranoid, I might feel that this preposterous President is stalking me. I have spent large chunks of the past few winters as the guest of friends in a rented house in Palm Beach; for the past two years our house has been exactly four doors from Mar-a-Lago.
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