Friday
A bright morning on my gunnery range, which occupies a remote corner of the Estate frequented only by sheep and ramblers. My companion is my old friend and fellow peer Matthew “Knuckles” Oakeshott, who rang earlier in the week asking for personal tuition in the deployment of the Bonkers Patent Exploding Focus (for use in marginal wards).
I give him my usual lecture: “The key thing after you have pulled out the pin is to get it through the letterbox, leg it down the garden path and dive behind the hedge before it goes off.” I then invite him to try it out for himself on a mock-up of a front door that I have had erected for just such occasions.
He pulls out the pin with gusto, but then spends an age fiddling with the letterbox, with the result that the Focus goes off while he is still holding it. Fortunately, he is unharmed (though rather black in the face).
“I am afraid, Knuckles, that This Sort of Thing may not be for you,” I tell him gently. “And I’d stay away from Ukip activists until I have had a good wash.”
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
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