This week in the saga

This is the week the term stops being about policy and starts being about names. On Sunday the proclamation lands and a sea nine hundred miles wide is renamed by signature; the water does not argue, and neither does the atlas, which quietly begins to carry both. On Friday the predecessor's clearances are revoked in a paragraph that carefully explains the precedent was his to begin with. The aid agency is shuttered the same day, in capitals, at half past nine in the morning. That afternoon he removes the board of the national arts centre and installs himself as chairman of it — the first time the golden age is invoked as a job title rather than a slogan. Saturday morning the country is coming back faster than anyone thought possible and we are respected all over the world, like never before. The instruction at the end of that one is a single word, and it is the most honest thing in the week: enjoy.