No of course not, nor did I need to to read the passage. It sounds to me like you are you are overestimating the importance of all these trivial details - gett

No of course not, nor did I need to to read the passage. It sounds to me like you are you are overestimating the importance of all these trivial details - getting caught up in the minutia is exactly what might make this seem (falsely) inaccessible to people who don't really know how to read properly. You demand to know whether the reader can pick out the individual trees, when in reality they see the forest just fine. I don't think you need to know any of that to be able to read and understand this passage. What you need to know is: There's a guy who's eating, and then we immediately break away for a lengthy description of the weather and the environment of the city - all of which is easily digestible without dicking about with trivial details of UK law and politics. If you'd get tripped up by anything, I'd imagine it would be "it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus" given that 'wonderful' in this context means the precise opposite of the common usage today - literally, inspiring wonder - as this dinosaur would be an unremarkable sight, not inspiring wonder. There's all sorts of clever little twists and turns in word usage here, if you're worried about 'Michaelmas' or the etymology of the term 'Chancellor' then you've already lost the plot, imo.