It seems that the scientists have proved that, genetically speaking, men differ little from mice. I am not surprised: I well recall the career of a colleague of mine in the '06 Parliament. Despite having been chosen as the Liberal candidate at the eleventh hour, he achieved one of our more startling gains from the Conservatives in that historic election. Of short stature, with a beady eye and luxuriant whiskers, he played his full part in the proceedings of the House, often making telling interventions in a rather high-pitched voice. At one time he was widely tipped as the next-President-but-one of the Board of Cheese, but an unfortunate episode whereby he was obliged to resign from the Reform Club over some unsightly holes in the wainscoting cut short his career in public life. Nevertheless, I kept up our acquaintance, and he remained a regular guest at the Hall until he went for a stroll one evening in 1913 and encountered the stables cat. Strange the things one remembers.
As regular readers will know, I am not one to blow my own trumpet, but it does distress me when credit is not placed where it is due. Take Islington Borough Council's Acceptable Behaviour Contracts, which everyone is going on about: apparently they "harness the Council's role as landlord to encourage parents to produce better behaviour from young people". As if I have not been doing the same here on the Estate for years! If a little girl fails to curtsey as I pass, or a young lad neglects to touch his forelock whilst holding the gate open for my horse, I have the entire family evicted. As Islington's Liberal Democrat administration has found: "as soon as the question of tenancy is raised, parents take the situation seriously". I have some sympathy with those who ask why it is only the younger generation who are subject to this regime - only this morning a hulking fellow of 30 or so addressed me without wringing his cap - but as Liberals I am sure we all agree that those whose parents cannot afford to buy their own homes should have fewer rights.
An idle morning in my library with the newspapers. The Americans are planning a landing on Lembit Öpik; Labour is promising to build a new wing at the Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness, and the Conservatives are promising to build two; a lesbian has been raped. How terrible to travel all the way to Britain and be treated like that! Meanwhile trains are colliding in Yorkshire, and I have a feeling that I am going down with foot-and-mouth. I return to bed with teddy.
The death of Sir Donald Bradman reminds me of an amusing incident. It was 1948, and the touring Australians were cutting a swathe through the English counties. Although he was by then nearing the end of his career, he was still the most feared of all batsman. Therefore, in conclave with my old friend Douglas Jardine, I hatched a plan to capture his wicket cheaply when he turned out against the Gentlemen of Rutland here at the Hall. Jardine and I had observed, at a reception held at London Zoo, that the Don was terribly afraid of spiders. Accordingly I armed my short leg fieldsman with a particularly hairy tarantula. When Dame Joan Sutherland had fallen lbw to one which seamed and kept a little low, Bradman emerged at number three. Immediately, I brought myself on at the Orphanage End and pitched up a cleverly flighted leg break. At a prearranged signal, forward short leg released the spider, Bradman shrieked and leapt in the air, and the ball removed his off bail. I flatter myself that this stroke of captaincy was the turning point in the Australians' only defeat of the summer.
I bump into Paul Tyler at Westminster. "I see they've found some paw prints from that beast of Bodmin of yours," I say brightly. He appears a little perturbed: "Who's been talking? I wasn't there. It's not even in my constituency. What I choose to do at night is my own concern. Just because I have black fur on my palms it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me. Besides, sheep go missing all the time. It's nothing to get worked up about. You don't think I could catch foot-and-mouth do you?" He lopes away towards Westminster tube station.
Cowley Street has been refurbished, and very good job has been made of it too. In particular, my penthouse flat has been spruced up quite delightfully. Whilst I usually stay at Bonkers House in Belgrave Square when in Town, a pied-à-terre in Westminster has its uses. During the extensive building works, many things were unearthed. Particularly interesting was a collection of empty claret bottles, later donated to the Jenkins Trust Museum in Merthyr Tydfil. Mr Bryan Magee, the former SDP MP for Leyton, was found locked in a forgotten broom cupboard, and a bound volume of the collected journalism of Polly Toynbee was also turned up. I had this burnt before it fell into impressionable hands.
A quiet day on the Estate preparing for the new tourist season. In particular, I supervise Meadowcroft as he performs a little replanting of the celebrated Bonkers Hall Maze. The Rutland leylandii is a wonderful plant, and just the ticket for this sort of job. It grows so quickly that many a visitor has taken a turning, paused a moment to ponder his next move, then turned to find the hedge closed up behind him. The result is that the challenge of the maze lies quite as much in finding one's way out again as it does in locating the statue of the young Violet Bonham Carter as the nymph Echo at its centre. Fortunately, a secret passage begins beneath the pedestal and emerges in the cellars of the Hall, and many a charabanc-load of trippers has been happy to make generous donations to one of other of my good causes in order to secure their release. If it benefits the Well-Behaved Orphans' Christmas Treat Fund, the Home for Distressed Councillors, Herne Bay, or helps me with a fact-finding mission to the Hotel Splendide, Antibes, I see nothing reprehensible in this practice.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10