NORMALLY, Tony Blair is driven in a limo the 500 yards from No 10 along Whitehall to the House of Commons to face his weekly grilling at Prime Ministers' Questions. This is for security reasons.

But these are not normal times and so yesterday, for whatever reason, he chose to walk. The journey offered a glimpse of the pace at which the Prime Minister is living his life at the moment.

By the time he reached Portcullis House, the administration block next to the Commons, he was travelling at a ferocious speed, whizzing past the fountains and plants before disappearing into the tunnel leading into the Commons.

Aides were trailing and, struggling to keep up, were muscle-bound men talking into their jacket collars.

These are not normal times. They are barmy but fascinating. No one, not even Mr Blair himself, can know where it is all going to end.

Perhaps this was why he looked remarkably relaxed and resigned to whatever fate is about throw at him. There was nothing that betrayed the enormous strain he is under.

This was a grave Prime Minister's Questions that befitted the times, yet he still managed a quip at his own expense. After fending off Iain Duncan Smith's repeated calls for Clare Short to be sacked, he was eventually tackled from his own benches about Donald Rumsfeld's previous convictions.

Public accounts committee chairman Tony Wright told the House that, in 1998, Mr Rumsfeld had called on President Clinton to act unilaterally against Iraq.

Mr Blair said he could not answer for the comments of every individual in every administration in the world - "including occasionally even my own". It was a clear reference to Ms Short. It brought the House down, though what the absent International Development Secretary thought of it we will never know.

While no one, not even Mr Blair, can say where this crisis is going to end, one of the Prime Minister's answers did reveal where he thought it might be going.

Pressed on whether a second United Nations resolution would provide the legal basis for war, he replied it would be "highly desirable to represent the views of the international community".

Not an essential component in building a legal war, but a "highly desirable" way of presenting a united PR front - and a way that could steer Mr Blair back into more normal times.