A pivotal year: Lord Bonkers in 2017

January

The year began with Lord Bonkers being told by a Well-Behaved Orphan that "chimbleys is awkward things", praising Dutch Mulholland and promising to build

an impenetrable, physical, deep, powerful, beautiful ha-ha. It will keep out invaders and, incidentally, keep in domestic staff.

He also met the Wise Woman of Wing:

Incidentally, while we were out in the garden it started to spit, but when I suggested we go indoors she replied: "I’ll do my scrying in the rain."

March

After GCHQ warned of the danger to British political parties of Russian hacking, I had to report:

Lord Bonkers tells me he "caught two fellows with snow on their boots going through the Shuttleworths" at a remote rural committee room during the Ripon by-election of 1973.

In the same month, in an attempt at intimidation, cabinet ministers took to sitting in on House of Lords' debates on Brexit:

I wasn’t having that so I stared right back. When that didn’t work I went through my full gamut of faces: the lovesick Frisian; the angry walrus; Roy Jenkins on the lavatory ... 

I took a party of Liberal Democrat peers (you may have noticed we are not exactly short of them) off to the tearoom for a spot of training in Hard Stares and pulling the aforementioned faces (though the Jenkins is not one for novices). 

I am proud to announce that, after I had left for home, one of my pupils made a junior minister cry.

The old boy also reported that Jeremy Corbyn is a deep-cover agent:

Years ago a drunken Tory confessed to me that his party has talent spotters at prep schools. What they look for goodness only knows – a winning way with the ablative plural, perhaps, or particularly clean knees ... 

Such deep-cover agents are not unusual – I expect my readers could name a few themselves – but to the best of my knowledge Jeremy Corbyn is the first Conservative to lead the Labour Party.

Having observed Corbyn's support for Brexit since then, I am forced to conclude he is right.

April

A Ukip candidate in Glasgow said she was sexually attracted to gorillas. I was reminded of a story Lord Bonkers once told me about Twycross Zoo,

May

Reminiscing about York and March's Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, my employer mentioned Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate. ("What a scandal that was!")

He was also proud when the party's press team came to the Bonkers Home for Well-Behaved Orphans to take a photograph for one of our general election posters.

You can see it at the head of this post,

July

Despite the best efforts of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, I turned up a photograph of Bonkers Hall I took before I met Lord Bonkers.

I also found conclusive proof that Freddie and Fiona work at the New European.

Lord Bonkers himself gave the inside story on the fall of Tim Farron.

September

Lord Bonkers accompanied the Well-Behaved Orphans on their holiday at Trescothick Bay in Cornwall:

Bathing, running barefoot across the sand, burying Matron... I had a high old time of it.

He also reported a successful 'Question Time' at the village hall:

There was our own Vince ‘High-Voltage’ Cable; the Wise Woman of Wing; the High Queen of the Elves of Rockingham Forest; and the Professor of Hard Sums from the University of Rutland at Belvoir. 

I was prevailed upon to join the panel myself and, best of all, there was not a member of the Dimbleby family in sight.

In his traditional foreword to the Liberator songbook, he discussed the perils of making music beside the sea:

How well I recall an early Aldeburgh Festival! Halfway through the concert, the hall was inundated by the North Sea because of an unusually high tide. 

Having looked about myself in the way I have just recommended to you, I was able to snatch up a passing double bass and paddle my way to safety – accompanied by Benjamin Britten on the piano.

November

The old boy displayed characteristic foresight in worrying about England's prospects in Australia:

Will it prove a tour too far for Anderson and Broad, who have justly been acclaimed as the Hinge and Bracket of English pace bowling? Why has no place been found for the Blessed Liam Plunkett when one of the Overton-Window twins from Somerset has been included? 

Should Mason Crane be on the ship at all? In my day a boy of that age who bowled a googly would have been sent straight to the Headmaster, just as surely as if he had used a semicolon in an English composition.

December

Lord Bonkers feared that the theft of the Liberal Democrat candidate for Cheltenham's bicycle was an attempt to sabotage his campaign, but I feared something even more sinister was going on.