23 September, 1893 — the restaurant on the first floor of the Destiny Hotel, London

The question about how his campaign had been going was almost certainly offered in the same way that people commented on the weather or asked perfunctory questions like how have you been — probably intended to lighten the mood after they had finished the obligatory sombre discussion of the dragon attack and the subsequent fallout that was still being managed — but Oz recharged his glass of red wine before he answered it. "I didn't expect that it would be easy," he said, (though of course he had, and that was the whole point of his announcing his candidacy in the first place — but if he was trying to curry favor with the current Minister that sentiment was unlikely to endear him). Complaining about campaigning was also, broadly speaking, probably not the way to win an endorsement, but he almost couldn't help himself. To anyone else, saying a bad word about the campaign process would have seemed like a sign of failure — that he didn't have what it took to actually be Minister. And maybe he didn't, (and maybe in the past two weeks it had become more abundantly clear in which areas he was lacking), but he thought if anyone was going to be sympathetic to these sorts of troubles it was likely to be Minister Ross, who had campaigned well and won.

"But I didn't expect it to be so repetitive. It seems as though I've spent two months answering the same five questions every time I leave the house," he continued. "It's amazing that gossip travels so quickly third or fourth-hand, but when it comes to policy it seems every voter needs to verify your position personally before they believe it. And perhaps not even then."

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