But why, I hear you ask, am I visiting them this Monday morning?
The answer is all to do with the European Union.
It seems that 70 years of peace are not enough to reconcile many to our membership of this excellent organisation. Nor does its sterling work weeding out the curlier bananas from our supermarkets cut the mustard any more.
So a few of us – I fear I cannot reveal any of the other names, but they are all Sound and many can be fairly counted as bigwigs – have got together to do something about this.
“What we need, ladies and gentlemen,” I told our first meeting, “is something spectacular to show what Europe can do.”
Various ideas were kicked around and it was eventually agreed that the most spectacular thing of all would be a European triumph in Outer Space.
It may be that this was my idea: I have taken an interest in interplanetary exploration ever since Raymond Baxter became the first Briton in space in Coronation year. Whatever the truth of that – I am not one to boast – discussion turned to the precise shape our Spectacular Thing should take.
Should we land on the moon? It’s been done. Mars? Everyone is talking about that these days.
Saturn? Terribly Far.
Someone said “We could send a probe to Uranus,” but I wasn’t having that.
Another cove suggested we land on a comet. It sounded a good idea, but it turns out the things don’t stand still, so that if you aimed a rocket at one it would be gone by the time you got there. I don’t suppose even the Department of Hard Sums at the University of Rutland at Belvoir could help with that one!
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.
Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary
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