Lord Bonkers' Diary: One of the great sights of London

The Rutland Union Canal may be blocked, and Stilton and pork pies be building up at the dockside, but duty calls our diarist back to Westminster.

Thursday

It is one of the great sights of London. Late at night the cognoscenti gather at the rear doors of the Treasury to see the rabble scrabbling for contracts and used fivers. Despite my travails in Rutland, I cannot resist taking in the spectacle on my journey home from Westminster to St Pancras.

Here is the brother-in-law of a junior minister; there the landlord of the local of an eminent peer. Here the former nanny to the second family of a cabinet minister; there a fellow with a folder of incriminating photographs. 

How the recipients caper as they pocket their gifts! Some can barely walk, so weighed down are they with cash. Really, I wonder the spectacle is not in every guide book.

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

Earlier this week...

• His spaceport on the outskirts of Thurso
• I have no memory of their Landslide from 1906
• A party of well-meaning water voles