Monday, September 28, 2020

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lunch with Freddie and Fiona

This entry would fall on the day of the leader's speech. I'm afraid Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer remains resolutely off message.

Thursday

Socially distanced lunch in Westminster with Freddie and Fiona. It transpires that the man from the Stockport chip shop was their favoured candidate in the leadership contest. 

“We write all of Ed’s best lines,” they tell me. “That one about rejoining the EU being ‘for the birds’? That was one of ours. And we thought of telling journalists to come back in ten months if they want to know what our policies are.” 

I ask how they see Liberal Democrat developing under our new leader. “We’re very interested in the yellow halo,” comes the reply. Now that may sound like something that would be offered in one of Soho’s less salubrious establishment’s, but they are referring to some opinion poll or other that says we are poised to sweep all before us in the South East of England. 

I tell them I have heard it all before: there used to be a fellow called Orpington Man we were supposed to cultivate, but he turned out to be a myth (or was that Piltdown Man?) Fiona, however, will have none of it. “There are still whole streets in Esher that are not within walking distance of a Waitrose. Those poor people! They need us.”  

I catch the train home to Rutland and spend the evening playing Layla on the jukebox in the Bonkers’ Arms.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

2 comments:

nigel hunter said...

Is Tunbridge Wells going to declare independance from the new state of Kent and have its own border!?

Jonathan Calder said...

Only time will tell.