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David Cameron - Source: Reuters -
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London may be the capital of capital, the world's biggest money market, but at 10.30 on a Sunday morning in Kensington High Street you still have a good hour and a half's wait before you can do the weekly grocery shop.
Surreal as it sounds, the very best person to whom I might address this parlous state awaits me in the nearest coffee shop. British Prime Minister David Cameron sits amusing his three children while his wife Samantha orders the hot chocolates, before bolting with a takeaway.
The men with the earpieces are there to protect their charge, not to mind his kids, so as SamCam takes the sanity runner any Dad dreads, the leader of one of the G8 nations and the man who vetoed the latest EU bailout is left alone with what he will shortly confess to me is the hardest task he'll face today.
David Cameron can afford a moment wrangling the kids. He's already on the front foot politically. The Sunday Telegraph I'm browsing carries an interview with him that will set today's news agenda.
Cameron's vowing to get tough on executive pay, or more specifically to allow shareholders to cast a binding vote on the bonuses and salaries the heads of FTSE 100 companies have set themselves, far in excess of results.
It's a stab at fairness as his coalition government beds in an austerity budget that'll give all an unhealthy share of the pain. This looks like a very necessary swing at the City, most of whom vote Conservative anyway.
Austerity is a word I've heard a lot this week in London. Retailers are starting to report that Christmas was no bonanza. Brits may have to forsake their Pot Noodle as workers at Unilever prepare to strike because the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate is about to cut their pension entitlements. At least the weather has been kind.
For all that, well out of the public eye, David Cameron seems like any other Dad, calmly trying to keep two older children busy while walking his youngest around the coffee bar like a marionette.
Our words are brief and few - as a newish Dad myself I know these times are precious, but trying too, so I commiserate, mentioning I've just flown a 13 hour flight from Hong Kong in economy class with our two-year-old son to take up this posting in London.
Daddy duty is a universal issue, we agree.
He wishes me luck for my two years in London and I feel bound to wish him the same, even though the ugly truth is, tougher times for Britain can only improve my prospects for plenty of news to report.
As David Cameron musters his tribe and leaves, I notice I still have an hour to fill before the supermarket opens and I've missed my chance to give him an earful. Fat chance he'd hear anyway over the entreaties of his daughter who wants to walk down the road to Hyde Park.
Politicians have to listen to the public, but daddies on duty have a higher calling.
Garth Bray takes over shortly from Paul Hobbs as TVNZ Europe Correspondent, once he's completed some daddy duties himself.
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