Home from an aborted visit to the Hotel Splendide, Antibes, after a little unpleasantness at the airport. A chit of a girl had the gall to ask me if I had packed my case myself: I wasted no time in telling her (a little hotly, I confess) that no gentleman would dream of doing such a thing and I had, of course, left arrangements to my valet. For some accountable reason this caused consternation and I found myself detained by the authorities. After some hours of waiting I demanded to be put through to the Reverend Hughes, whose word carries some weight at the Home Office owing to the success of his Church Lads Ping Pong Club in reducing crime, and he soon secured my release. Despite what Whittington was telling me the other day, I feel sure he will make an excellent Mayor of London.
I wander the Estate this misty morning, wondering what to make of the bittersweet news from Iraq. Saddam has fallen and one's heart rejoices with the Baghdadis, yet one wonders at what cost this victory has been achieved. Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tigris foaming with much blood. So heavy is my heart that I return to the Hall and order the release of two Conservative canvassers I have kept chained to the cellar walls since they blundered into the ward at the last election. I had it in mind to feed them to Ruttie, but now that seems a tawdry ambition. At least I am cheered when I pass the village school and here the inmates piping an old Rutland nursery rhyme:
The Grand Old Duke of
Skye
He was against the war
But when the bombs began to fall
He
wasn’t any more.
One reason for my melancholy at events in the Gulf is the trade that existed between the peoples of Iraq and Rutland in more civilised times. Rare silks and manuscripts in ancient scripts were brought from China by way of Merv, Bokhara and Samarkand; lush dates and chattering apes came from the dry and sandy deserts which are the banks of the Nile. All were assembled in the souks of Baghdad, then brought by camel over the Alps to the lowlands of Holland and thence by barge to Crowland. They were taken from there by ways known only to the men of the Fens (occasionally a camel would wander away from the caravan, which explains the wild herds around Littleport which many of my readers will recall with affection from the Isle of Ely by-election) to the uplands of Rutland, through the public bar of the Bonkers Arms, out the back door and through the yard, and then up the lane to my lodge gates. On the journey home they bore Melton Mowbray pork pies and Stilton cheeses from Cropwell Bishop, both greatly prized by the sheiks of Araby.
Down to the bookies to place a modest wager on myself in the Liberal Moustache of the Year competition. Imagine my chagrin upon finding that I am only second in the betting, with John Thurso installed as the favourite. Thurso, like his grandfather John O’ Groats before him, is MP for Caithness and Sutherland, where the Douneray atom plant is located. I have often wondered whether this benighted establishment was the source of the “magic dust” with which poor Maclennan would play when his attention wandered in meetings of select committees. It had the singular effect of making him glow in the dark which, while no doubt injurious to his health, was useful when one was following him along one of Westminster’s more obscure corridors. Now, I am not suggesting for a moment that the stewards investigate whether Thurso is using substances obtained from Douneray to make his moustache grow so luxuriantly, but shouldn’t he come forward and settle the matter once and for all?
What is one to make of the current American President? He does not strike one as a cultured or learned man, yet he is the only head of state in my experience (with the possible exception of King Hakon of Norway) able to peel bananas with his feet and this surely deserves some respect. Little Blair is clearly besotted with him and is often to be found in his presence, grinning at his side or squirming across the carpet like an unjustly whipped spaniel. Iain Duncan Smith, who many insist leads the Conservative Party, is also an admirer, but then he has been behaving very oddly of late in many ways. Did you hear him on the BBC Today Programme giggling manically as John Humphries tried to question him? Fortunately our own Jonathan Fryer, at Broadcasting House to read his “Thought for the Day”, was on hand to tip a jug of iced water over his head and calm him down.
It is always pleasing to see the latest research informing our policies. Thus I am delighted that Jim Wallace has taken up a theory that I have pioneered here at the Lord Bonkers’ Home for Well-Behaved Orphans. I have long maintained that it is not a good to idea to begin teaching children to read at too young an age, and I run the place with this in mind. Wallace has obviously been impressed with the results we obtain as he now wants to implement the scheme cross the whole of Scotland (or “Caledonia! Stern and wild”, as the poet Scott has it). I have yet to convince him that there are some things which should be undertaken at the most tender age, such as sweeping chimneys and scaring birds, but I am sure it is only a matter of time before our Scottish manifesto shows the benefits of these insights of mine too.
As I have learned over my long experience of public life, one should not believe all one reads in the newspapers. I recall, for instance, some disgraceful muck-raking over my entirely innocent investments in the Marconi Company. Nevertheless, I am dismayed to read that our chaps in Liverpool have forbidden the distribution of hot cross buns in case they offend people’s religious sensibilities. Surely, in this jolly multicultural country of ours, we should be tolerating one another’s religions? Here in the Church of Rutland we are happy to respect the Church of England’s right not to believe in God, but in return we ask that they respect our right to continue to burn heretics at the stake. That is what Liberalism is all about.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10