But again, reader, no. There is more gentrification here, too, done rather pleasingly, in the form of The Green Quarter: fancy homes, £399,000 and upwards; roaming security; large play and leisure areas; 1km of canal frontage; 13 acres of park, it says here, and a really rather good oat milk latte from the cafe.
There’s no place here, tash, for rebels and old-interested in Jaguars, or those invested in finding out what makes them tick.
The XF doesn’t look too out of place, at least, although it would look more suited to the area if it was an e-scooter or a supermarket delivery van.
Clearly I need to head to a location where I’m more likely to find, and which better suits, a modern jaguar saloon. If there’s no room for the antihero, perhaps I need to find a more discerning kind of owner, a more establishment-friendly type.
They don’t get much more establishment than our Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, so that’s where we are headed. Millbank is the road you would take to travel from the SIS building on the south bank of the Thames to Whitehall farther along on the north bank: if you’re a top secret-agency bigwig, that’s the route you’ll be driven.
Certainly it’s the route MI6’s fictional head, M of Bond film fame, takes, most notably in Skyfall.
Obviously Dame Judi Dench is not in any sense a wrong ‘un, but she has got a Jaguar, even if she rides in the back of it.
Establishment? Certainly. On the right side of things? Of course. But even here, in the heartland of law and democracy, there are shades of grey and allowed indiscretions.
Shadows; a definite nonconformity. There’s an edge to proceedings that’s quite… British.
In Skyfall, Bond and M swap Jaguar for Aston Martin, two brands that sit alongside each other with ease (they once did, in fact, under Ford control), but no swaps for me as I head to our last outpost of fictional Jaguarness, necessary in order to stretch the XF’s legs.
A drive out first on the M40 and then onto some twistier Home Counties back roads reminds me why I will miss a saloon like the XF, which was developed on roads that are definitely unique to our island.