Certain cynical voices in the UK media have suggested that the general atmosphere surrounding Gordon Brown's meeting in Washington today with Barack Obama is one of lack of enthusiasm on the president's part. It's almost as if Obama doesn't want to hear the prime minister's tried-and-tested methods for successfully rescuing your nation's collapsing banking sector! But that's all going to change decisively in just over an hour, ladies and gentlemen, because at that point Brown is going to cement the special relationship -- or special partnership, or friends with benefits, or whatever we're supposed to call it these days -- by giving Obama a penholder. Specifically, it's a penholder carved from the timbers of the Gannet, the 19th-century British gunboat that was the sister ship of the Resolute, and the desk in the Oval Office is made out of timbers from the Resolute, so now Obama has a matching set. He's also going to give him a copy of Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill, which Obama is obviously going to dive straight into, then read from cover to cover (to cover to cover to cover to cover to cover), because after all it's not like he's very busy at the moment and he could do with something to kill a few hours.
