Having just recently (January 2017) been appointed the UK’s Permanent Representative to the European Union, Tim Barrow will possibly have the job of despatching the notice informing European Council President Donald Tusk (himself just re-elected in early March for a second term of office) on Wednesday 29th March 2017 of the UK’s formal intention to secede from the European Union.
In the era of Dickens’ works the Dover Mail would labour up Shooter’s Hill.
(Image from Project Guttenburg)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/98/98-h/98-h.htm
The ambassadorial envoy of today is unlikely to be halted by the muddied rider that pursued the coach in Dickens’ tale. (He will probably speed through the Channel Tunnel).
But might the ‘blazing strange message’ - ‘recalled to life’ - ever be uttered in the context of this crucial despatch from Downing Street?
Paragraph five of Article 50 provides: ‘5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.’
Perhaps Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities has the answer:
“Tom!” softly over the coach roof.
“Hallo, Joe.”
“Did you hear the message?”
“I did, Joe.”
“What did you make of it, Tom?”
“Nothing at all, Joe.”
“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same of it myself.”