Volunteers

We were still in bed when the doorbell rang.

Fortunately we were having coffee, and actually I was on the phone to Number Two Daughter, who was having a flat car battery crisis.

There was not much I could do about this other than to make sympathetic noises, which I did, in the vain hope that this would make things better. Obviously it did not make any difference at all, and she still had a flat battery when I hung up.

The visitor was mildly embarrassed to be visiting us in bed, which was a bit unavoidable, since our bed is next to the front door. We got up and went downstairs, which was only moderately less embarrassing, because downstairs was still filled with the debris of several semi-migrated kitchens.

The visitor had come to see if we would help with the election, which we had already promised that we would do.

I do not mean help to run it, because obviously Her Majesty has already got perfectly adequate procedures in place for finding out who we would like to be running the country. I mean help to support our favoured candidate get the job.

In fact I do have a preferred local candidate, who is virtually everybody other than the current twerp. My contempt for our incumbent MP is such that if I had a choice between voting for either him or virtually anybody else – think, Roger Poopy, Henry the Eighth, Lydia Bennett, Charlie Cairoli, Boy George, Tywin Lannister, the idiots who ran off out of my taxi the other night – then he would still lose.

As it happens, and to my huge satisfaction, we know and like the chap who has volunteered to stand against him. He is a local farmer, and he is both sensible and cheerful. I would very much like him to win the election, and so we have volunteered to help out.

We are going to deliver leaflets telling people to vote for him. I do not think that these work at all, I never read them no matter which party puts them through our letterbox, and it would only irritate me if I did. Certainly I would not vote for somebody because a leaflet told me that it was a good idea.

Despite my lack of conviction about this method of persuasion, it seems to be the chosen approach of virtually every politician everywhere, and so we will have to go along with it. They are going to leave us some leaflets and we are going to irritate everybody on our road with them. It will make me feel partially responsible every time I see smoke coming out of somebody’s chimney. I will have helped to light a fire.

We had to rush to get dressed after that, because Number One Son-In-Law rang to say that he was on his way round, and he and Mark carried on dismantling and loading bits of kitchen into the van. I was inveighed upon to discuss the placement of new kitchen units at one point, and I got distracted and forgot about the biscuits which were in the oven. I was cross about that and declined to participate any further. 

Oliver looked after Ritalin Boy, and then later, Ritalin Boy’s little cousin as well. They were quite excited at spending the afternoon with a real Big Boy, and lots of thumps and bangs could be heard coming from their room. Oliver came staggering down after they had gone home to say that he thought he might have contracted a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The picture is my three daughters, who spent the night together yesterday for the first time in ages. They stayed at Number One Daughter’s house, because she had a weightlifting competition today, and Lucy was going to go and watch.

She came joint fourth, which I thought was jolly impressive.

I am so proud of them all.