Overview
"Try to imagine describing a colour to someone – it could be orange … and finding the words to do so. That is what it is like explaining minus 40 celsius (also Fahrenheit) … That is, 40 below. It is not cold, it is pain. For all the Radley members of The Group it was the first time any of had experience anything like it. I was outside for eight minutes on my own, at night, in a city (Des Moines) that was desolated, empty streets – no cars, certainly nobody walking ... and drifts on snow on the pavement three feet high. It looked, to my eyes, like an Arctic skyscape … and it was scary. And then there was the drive from Chicago to Des Moines: 327 miles – I reckon we passed another vehicle 4 times in an hour … the drifts of snow looked like Dementors straddling the carriageway … that was, if not scary, then unusual …"
"Here is the thing: all of these ... experiences … are a background to the main show. There was the cultural aspect of the trip, maybe a culture shock; the interaction with many lovely people who are in all senses a world away from many of us; the otherworldliness of Iowa … and the reality of being together 24/7 … all of that is a preamble to that main show I mentioned: the fact that Frank Luntz had taken us to see one of the greatest, one of the strangest, shows in United States Politics – the Iowa Caucus and, of course, it being Frank – we get to meet the players … we get inside the story. And that is before we get to the main show – the “what actually happened” ... Over to the boys …
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