From Fitzroy's Private Diary (Extract 89)

It appears the department is ‘on holiday’. What an odd idea! Of course, there remain various necessary services, which I cannot list here, but they ensure that any agents in the field who are able to reach a communication point can still call in to deliver information or, perhaps, even to ask for help. Would said help not be delivered until after the holidays, I wonder?

This is, of course, the fault of the ever-expanding clerical and so-called managerial positions. With the former, I suppose, it was what people of that class expect, after all, they invented that awful time known as ‘the weekend’. Persons of my class generally fall into two camps. Either they consider themselves on holiday all the time and do little or no work. These are colloquially known as wastrels. The others, who run working estates, or service their country in other ways, like me, have never known the luxury of a holiday. On the small estate I own in the South, my animals still need fed on holidays as much as they do on any other day. I’m sure my staff would love a day when the sheep or the cattle offered to feed themselves, but that is nothing less than a fairy tale.

My point is that in the real world, amid all the things that can happen, there are no holidays. There are no occasions when a spy can turn his back upon the world, no more than a farmer can leave his livestock unfed.

Yes, there are celebrations, such as Christmas, but these are quite aside from the work that must still be done. It’s one of the reasons that holidays are so damn inconvenient. However, the assimilation of diplomatic parties into a Christmas celebration at White Orchards is a damned good idea. Damn clever of Euphemia to suggest it. Why with the right people on hand, I may even be tempted into playing Hunt the ruddy Slipper. There are a few people I can think of I would very much like to get alone in a dark corner.

What is damn insensitive is the frequency of said holidays. Christmas, I suppose, one must allow, but now the services have an expectation of having the other solstices and some of the summer high days away from work.

What do they expect me to do? Drop a note to Herr Schmitt in Germany, or my friend Vladimir in Russia, saying our intelligence offices are closed between such and such dates, so please don’t do anything annoying during this period? Perhaps I could even ask them to recall all their assassins, spies and saboteurs so as not to interfere with our holidays.

There are times when I despise the middle classes and their bourgeois ideas. Normally, I am all for going for a pint and chatting with the chaps, but all this talk of taking time off has really got my goat.