My Dad’s a clever bloke. He’s also, as you might already know, a man of minimal fuss and frippery. He doesn’t fuck about, if that’s the expression I want.

Which is why it surprised me to get the following email from him on the 7th November. The subject was “The well turned phrase” and it was addressed to both me and my sister. (Which immediately marks it down as one of those “Sage Advice From Parent” emails.)

It read as follows:

One of the Telegraph’s hard-bitten, right wing reporters, Anne Applebaum, observed on Thursday morning that she knew it was all over for Mc Cain when she saw the lines forming outside her local polling station, and read the text that every person who is black is sending to each other this week.

“Rosa sat so that Martin could walk.
Martin walked so that Barack could run.
Barack ran so that we could fly.”

I can barely type this without a proud tear filling the eye for Rosa Parks and all the other Freedom Riders who faced billy clubs, dogs and tear gas, rather than sit in the back of the bus. (Alabama 1960-62).

Those with Brideshead Revisited to hand may like to re-read the last page; about flames being relit, and that.

Which was, you know, wierd.

My favourite parts of it are “every person who is black” - which might be a verbatim quote from the Telegraph, but could equally well be an example of one sixty year old’s well-meaning attempt at broad-mindedness.

Also of note is the bracketed “(Alabama 1960-62)” - simply because it always makes me smile that my Dad is a self-hating teacher.

Anyway, the reason that I bring it up is because, like I said, my Dad is a clever bloke. On a whim, I tracked down my copy of Brideshead Revisited and re-read the last page in the light of Obama’s victory and he’s only bloody right.

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer; an ancient, newly learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me. I thought:

‘The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomdo sedet solacivitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

‘And yet,’ I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding ‘Pick-em-up, pick-em-up, hot potatoes’, ‘and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

‘Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for the other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.’

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.

‘You’re looking unusually cheerful today.’ said the second-in-command.