I expect, like me, you watched Wimbledon on the moving television – Andy Williams must be so proud – but I never enjoy lawn tennis quite as much as our own game of Rutland tennis (sometimes called “unreal tennis”). It is something of a minority sport, as there is only one court in the world; by a happy chance it can be found here at the Hall. The playing area is bounded by the rear wall of the chapel, the Estate’s internal railway system, my orchid houses and a minor tributary of the Welland. Play is broadly as in lawn tennis, although the existence of features such as trap doors, a level crossing and high-voltage cables render it rather more challenging; at least rallying from the baseline is a less hazardous strategy now that the menagerie has been moved. I still play a decent game, though I have been known to resort to an electric Bath chair if the match enters a fifth set. Today I organise my guests into a doubles tournament and find myself playing with Phil Willis. I suggest to him that he occasionally vary things by climbing a spiral staircase and putting the ball into play from a balcony above our heads. He is against the idea because it would involve a two-tier service.
As I write these lines in the snug of the Bonkers’ Arms I have a foaming pint of Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter at my elbow and a chaser of Auld Johnston close at hand. I have just returned from a week at young Kennedy’s Highland retreat, and in all honesty it is a relief to be home. The early morning runs! The carrot juice! The spur of the moment expeditions to climb Ben Bunny! If I had not been able to sneak away to my own Scottish establishment at Brig o' Dread for regular stiffeners, I tremble to think what would have become of me. Yet, as Nanny often pointed out, every cloud has a silver lining. Last night, when I was pouring out my heart to Meadowcroft in his potting shed, the Hebridean hedgehogs remarked that it sounded just their sort of place, and they left this morning by the milk train. As Meadowcroft remarked, “They urchins be skedaddled.”
To Westminster for a meeting of the Parliamentary party. Of late stories have been appearing in the newspapers which suggest to the experienced eye that Certain People in the Liberal Democrats have been spreading malicious gossip about our leader. I decide that, as an elder statesman, I should make my feelings clear and therefore address the room as follows: “I expect you all enjoy watching the Teletubbies. Perhaps, like me, you are particularly fond of the part in the middle where one of the four shows a film on his (or is it her? I am never sure) tummy. Often it is about a farm, or something interesting like that, and you can learn the most useful things. But my point is this: it doesn’t matter whose tummy the film is shown on, because all the Teletubbies are pleased. I think we could learn a lot from that, don’t you?” I flatter myself that this shaft goes home.
An old friend rings from the far north of Caithness to report that rabbits are burrowing into the stores of atomic waste at Dounreay and causing alarm from Wick to Thurso. Inspiration strikes and I enquire: “Do, by any chance, the rabbits that enter this atom plant emerge with splendid black moustaches?” When he replies in the affirmative, I quote the Swan of Avon to telling effect: “O my prophetic soul!” (That is from Hamlet, you know: a play about a Danish chap who couldn’t make his mind up. Rather Hard Work, but he manages to work a lot of famous lines into it.) I retire to my Library to write to the steward of the Liberal Moustache of the Year Award.
This morning’s Liberal Democrat News contains a fascinating column by our own Andrew “Plum” Duff extolling the virtues of the new European constitution. He is particular keen on the idea of a European foreign minister. I am a little puzzled and telephone him to ask how this will work when, as in the case of the recent unpleasantness in Mesopotamia, half the European nations take one view and half take the other. Plum soon puts me right. In such a case the minister will have two hats and make a strong speech in favour of war wearing the first of them. He will then leave the room, only to re-enter immediately by a different door, sporting the other hat, and make an equally persuasive contribution against. Events will continue in this fashion until the his trousers fall down (revealing a fine pair of polka dot boxer shorts) and he hides in the wardrobe as his wife and the vicar come into the room through the French windows.
I read in the Manchester Guardian that some body calling itself the “European Stability Initiative” has published a report accusing our own Paddy Ashplant of “running Bosnia like a Raj”. I am not familiar with this “Initiative”, but I waste no time it writing it one of my stiffer letters. I also telephone Sarajevo to commiserate with Ashplant; it transpires that he is out shooting tigers, but the punka wallah promises to pass on my warm regards.
Another one of those misty mornings in East Anglian ports about which I write so well – in my experience people always go for stuff about the lonely cries of hamwees, wheways and so forth. Today I am here to see off a boatload of emigrants as they head for the rocky coast around Stockholm, where there the call of the toksvig is a more familiar sound. Aboard I see many Socialists, but also some of my dearest Liberal friends, and I ask one fellow why they are leaving. “It’s very simple, your lordship. We have spent years signing each others’ letters to the newspapers saying how much better things are ordered in Sweden and how we in Britain should be more like them. Did you know they never speak harshly to their children and have more hygienic drains than we do? Anyway, in the end we decided that it would save a great deal of time if we simply went to live there.” I am sad to see them go, but console myself with the thought that it will now be easier to get a table in Islington’s more fashionable restaurants. I hasten to my field telephone and book lunch at a little place where they do a splendid terrine of hamwees.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10