Lord Bonkers' Diary: Sarah Dyke is battling the forces of darkness

Marcus Trescothick retired in 2019 after a remarkable 25-year career with Somerset and England. But when I first mentioned the Well-Behaved Orphans' summer holiday in the pages of Liberator, he was a 14-year-old playing alongside his father for the Keynsham club in Bristol. In those days the WBOs went to a different Cornish resort: Trebilcock Bay.

A prize (in a very real sense) for the first Liberal England reader to tell me where that name came from.

Anyway, this entry brings us to the end of another week with Lord Bonkers. I see the old boy was right about Somerton and Frome.

Monday

Soon it will be high summer and time to take the Well-Behaved Orphans on their annual holiday at Trescothick Bay in Cornwall, but before I see to that happy duty I have another to fulfil: a whistle-stop tour of current by-elections.  First Selby, where a contest has been called following the resignation of one Nigel Adams – I know no more about him than you do. Then it will be off to Uxbridge, where I am told the locals are still celebrating the departure of Boris Johnson, before I call in at Somerton and Frome. Here our own Sarah Dyke is battling the forces of darkness. With a little strategic advice and practical help from you diarist, I fully expect her to triumph.

Finally, I shall hang my hat in Mid Bedfordshire, where a by-election has long been promised but has yet to materialise because the aforementioned Dorries refuses to make good her solemn oath to resign. If she does finally cop for the Chiltern Hundreds, then whichever Conservative is selected will face the unhappy task of defending their party’s widely disliked, at least in Bedfordshire, ‘Do Your Number Twos in the Great Ouse’ campaign.

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

Earlier this week...

• The other animals would lay their disputes before the kangaroos
• One of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys
• Ofwat, Ofgem, Ofthis, Ofthat
• Charabanc trips to the coast have been booked
• Sporting on its shore in animal skins
• Lynched during the lunch interval