Lord Bonkers' Diary: Streets given over to foxes and feral cats

Bertie Wooster refers to the Shakespeare's "fretful porpentine" at one one point: "Odd that he should have said porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt, as so often happens with ghosts." But then, with the use of abbreviations like F&F and WBOs, this column has been owing more to Wodehouse lately.

The key is to steal from lots of different writers. Then you become original.

Wednesday

Westminster in high summer is strangely deserted – the irony is that I normally have to dodge F&F when here, but today I’ve come to the House to be sure of avoiding them. The Whitehall mandarins have left for Tuscany or the grouse moors, and the only politico you see is the odd junior minister who’s been naughty and made to stay behind. Otherwise, I find the streets given over to foxes and  feral cats.

As a result, when I chance upon a Labour peer we clap each other heartily upon the back and make a beeline for one of my clubs. Said peer then unfolds a tale that makes my each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. (A good line that: I got it from our own Manuela Perteghella.) 

It seems the prime minister was locked in a store cupboard in No. 10 for the best part of a fortnight and had to survive on luxury biscuits and those boiled sweets they have at meetings with flipcharts. “Whatever did you people do?” I ask. “That’s the worrying thing,” replies my companion. “No one noticed for the first ten days.”

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

Earlier this week

• Dallas and its notorious School Book Suppository
• "He spelt his name with an omelette"