For as long as I can remember I have held a special celebration here at the Hall on the eve of Budget day. It is always a jolly, and many prominent Liberals have attended in their time; this year the event is graced by the presence of the leader of our party. We begin with a tour of the old Bonkers Funworld theme park, which the “Health and Safety” wallahs insisted on closing down a few years ago. (I sometimes think these people would stop the Titanic sailing if it were around today!) The rides still work perfectly well (or very nearly) and it is charming to see our leader with half a dozen Well-Behaved Orphans on each hand dragging “Uncle Charlie” to enjoy one more ride on the Death Gulch Super Blaster. Then we adjourn for luncheon, finishing with a ’37 Stilton which I have been saving for this occasion. Bearing in mind that Kennedy has to address the House on the morrow, I serve him only Bonkers Spa Mineral Water. (There is great enthusiasm for organic food nowadays, so I was gratified when tests showed it to contain a particularly high percentage of organic matter.) The entertainment draws to a close with a boat trip on Rutland Water. Unfortunately, conditions are a little choppy, but the crew of the Oakham lifeboat are terribly nice about it.
I am alarmed when Kennedy is indisposed and unable to reply to the Budget debate. It must be one of those modern “24-hour” bugs, as he was in perfect health when he arrived at the Hall yesterday. My old friend Vincent “Low-Voltage” Cable nobly agrees to step into the breach, but as the only speech he has prepared at such short notice is an address on “Our Friend the Bee” which he recently gave to the Hampton Wick Oddfellows, he meets with limited success.
To London for my monthly luncheon with those amusing young people from Liberator magazine. To begin with, the conversation is as diverting as ever. One fellow claims to have seen documentary evidence that David Laws is in league with Beelzebub; another suggests that the late Eric Heffer be asked to write on economic policy. However, things become rather sticky when talk turns to the retirement of Alistair Cooke. One says how important it is not to outstay one’s welcome; another says there is nothing worse than an old man banging on and on and boring everyone rigid. I attempt to divert the company on to the prospects for the forthcoming cricket season, but we are soon back on the subject of Cooke and someone remarks that it is very difficult when someone is too eminent to sack but simply will not take the hint that it is time for him to go. Eventually I leave for Rutland, quite forgetting to pay my share of the bill. When I tune to the Home Service this evening I hear that Cooke has dropped dead. How sad that such a promising career should be cut short!
Strolling around Westmsinter I discover that our shadow Home Secretary Rising Star has pitched his tepee by the banks of the Thames. “Rising Star make party look tough on crime without compromising um Liberal principles,” he says. “How?” I ask, genuinely interested. “How,” he replies. “That’s right,” I say, “how?” “How,” he replies again. I can see that the conversation is getting nowhere so I bid him good day. Whilst I accept that our policy on crime has to go beyond the continued funding of the Reverened Hughes’ Church Lads Ping Pong Club, I would appreciate a little more detail than this.
There has been a lot of talk lately about sharp practice in the sport of kings. I am reminded of an unfortunate experience of my own back in the twenties when I owned the favourite for the Derby. The horse had won every race for which I entered it and led at Epsom as it passed the catherine furlong post, only for it to suddenly turn around and gallop back towards the start. I had my suspicions at the time, and these were in no measure assuaged two days later when the wretched nag overtook me at the wheel of a sports car full of movie starlets on the way to Brighton. Why, I even found it occupying the neighbouring suite to mine at the Hotel Splendide, Antibes, that summer! Its ill-gotten gains soon petered out, however, and it ended its days pulling a milk cart in Gosport and doing occasional commentaries for the BBC.
News reached me the other day that the Member for Teignbridge is having trouble with his chimney. (Do you know the Youngers-Ross? Charming people and very Sound on ragwort.) I dropped him a line offering to sort it out in return for a donation to the Well-Behaved Orphans’ Vocational Education Fund. As I am in his neck of the woods this afternoon I call on him, only to find that the chimney does not need sweeping after all. Rather, there are four baby squirrels nesting in it. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, so cute one wants to take it home and cuddle it: yes, Ricky Younger-Ross is in fine form and the squirrels look well too. I learn that he is to have them neutered before releasing them into the wild. Squirrels’ testicles are an acknowledged delicacy (though one needs rather a lot of them to make a meal), but I do wonder how “Vote Liberal – We castrate squirrels” will play as a slogan at the next general election. We have had trouble with these “animal rights” people in Devon before.
The Reverend Hughes has been busy in London of late, and I gather that he rather fancies his chances of becoming Mayor. The present incumbent, Newts Livingstone, has replaced all the cockneys’ beloved Routemaster buses with ghastly articulated vehicles that burst into flames at the drop of a hat. Despite this, the padre is at the crease at St Asquith’s today and preaches a fine sermon on Isaiah 10:1-3:
“Shame on you! You who make unjust laws and publish burdensome decrees, depriving the poor of justice, robbing the weakest of my people of their rights, despoiling the widow and plundering the orphan. What will you do when called to account, when ruin from afar confronts you? To whom will you flee for help?”
I think the bit about plundering the orphan in rather poor taste, and tell him so in no uncertain terms, but otherwise it is a splendid performance.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10