A day out in Battersea power station — an institution which used to be grand but is now derelict and has been under reconstruction for as long as most of us can remember.
"It's symbolic," explained a clipboard Cameronian. "A revival."
He did not mention the rats running around the building site outside.
The man himself ran late, so we heard every possible pop song about change ever recorded. He finally bounded on looking smooth and pink and very perky indeed. The tie was regal purple. That slightly comical quiff had been lacquered into submission.
"This great opening up is the whole answer!" cried Dave delphically. "We the People" are to be in charge of the Big Society. A terrifying thought. You and I are to run the government under the Tories. And we thought we had enough on with the day jobs.
Manifestos had been handed out in hardback plain blue covers, like the old Shorter Latin Primer, reflecting the new sobriety. Mr Cameron was on fine form. Jovial but not juvenile, smooth but not too slick, firm but without his occasional irritability.
He blazed sincere belief about his smaller state solutions to our woes, but didn't sound like a libertarian nutter. Impertinent journalists asked if it wouldn't end up making the public services even worse.
He swatted them elegantly aside, preaching the gospel of active citizens running schools, and enlivening communities, as bureaucracies withered. God knows what it will be like in practice but finally, he has found the big idea that he feels comfortable with.
No question, the Tory leader outperformed Gordon Brown — whose launch yesterday looked like Fat Pang addressing a provincial branch of the communist party — by a mile.
Someone asked what he could do in No 10, given there is no money left to spend. "That's the old way: the Labour way!" rallied quiffless Dave. "We are all in this together," he insisted.
And so they were — on a very low budget, but on a roll.
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