Country Matters

“I think,” said Mrs M – always a worrying start this – “I think,” said Mrs M on Tuesday night, “that it may be time to open up a new line of communication.”

We were watching our very own lib-dem MP, Andrew Stunell, on the TV news, seated at a wood-effect Round Table. He really is looking a bit thin: we should have him in for shepherd’s pie.

Not quite knight

“God’s Truth, Woman!” I was tempted to say. Why should anybody want to open up more communication, when there is clearly far too much already? Andrew and co. were already far too busy, nipping in and out of Millbank and Walworth Road. If they had to enter into discussions with Mrs M at number 72 as well, we would have no Government this side of Whitsun.

Mind you, Andrew’s battle-hardened for Westminster. All these years he’s been fending off Staffies on the Cherry Tree estate and bottled blondes in Marple. Yes, we’ve got a bit of most things in Hazel Grove constituency: a few vestigial mills making cardboard under contract for China; green hills to set off desirable dwellings; posh preps and bog standard high schools; air-conditioned executives waiting on Dan Bank for the A6 Relief Road. There are inter-war estates with privatised porches; dying pubs and late night clubs. We can even rise to an occasional gangland shooting.

You’d think that 13 years of listening to us all moaning on would be ideal training for Westminster. But I worry this coalition might be more interested in what make us the same than what makes us different. We’re now in the civil sinews of a con-dem embrace. Those who aren’t with us are... with us.

At least the election was good fun while it lasted. M3 was up all election night, or at least long enough to discover that the big blue numbers were not Labour seats after all. (He set his iPhone for 3 am, but we have been sabotaging their gadgets ever since Mrs M dropped M1’s bleeping Tamagotchi in the bath.) Our newspaper has a new section called a “viewspaper”, which its new owner feels conveys the mission to his intellectually challenged readers. However, I’ve been pleased to report that the “viewspaper” has been getting quite well buttered at breakfast over the last week.

“I wonder what my brother thinks,” says my lady. It is now Wednesday evening. On the TV, Nick ‘n’ Dave are in matching grey suits, but sport coloured ties, so you can tell them apart.

Ah, that’s it, then: The Brother.

“Do you think it’s a good time to ring him?” It’s too late for golf, and there are no Rugby Union fixtures that I know of. So the worst risk is a police drama on Sky HD.

Mrs M goes in search of a telephone, saying something about a “constitutional”. That would be nice: a pleasant stroll over the hill to Knowle Farm perhaps, exchanging greetings with sundry canines and ladies in riding boots.

“I wonder what he thinks about it all”.

At this point, it is important to state plainly that The Brother has nothing in common with Gordon’s opinion of Gillian Duffy. No one would accuse The Brother of being other than forthright in his opinion, and of backing it up on the stump and in the bar.

I don’t care whether he’s with the Levellers or the Luddites, the Monday Club or the Moonies. At least he knows they’re all different.

By Thursday, a third young man has taken to the podium. This one has a red tie. That’ll be nice then: Dave ‘n’ Nick ‘n’ Dave Miliband too.

Were we at school together?

Is that how it’s going to be now? All the same except for the colour of our ties?

Not here we’re not.

Gin-less in Greeneland

Still in Freetown, Sierra Leone

They ran out of gin at the Hotel Barmoi the other night. Perhaps gin and tonic is less of a staple today of than it was in the colonial days Graham Greene wrote about.

I did think of nipping outside the hotel to replenish supplies: our road has a row of hawkers selling sachets of Pegler Gin for about 15p a tot, but then I thought better of it.

So here we all are, waiting for the plane to take us home. I hope that Mrs M and the boys won’t take it amiss, but really I’m not very bothered about the delay. Yesterday the manager, Miss Newlands, moved me to a new room with a Plasma Gold air-conditioning device. Also, if I poke my nose out onto the balcony for a minute, I can glimpse, through the tangle of water tanks and palm trees, a rocky cove with small surf breaking over it and the Atlantic beyond. That, and the gentle whoosh of the Plasma Gold, certainly beats fighting the boys for the computer in the cupboard we laughingly call Daddy’s Study.

We certainly have interesting company here at the Barmoi. Quite a lot of the guests are foreign and white. There are the modest ones in sensible shoes, who pull their own wheelie bags, and are wonderfully polite to the staff. I met one at the ministry the other day, and she turned out to be impossibly clever and well-read. Then there are the chaps who do something up-country and quietly spend their days off watching football and drinking beer. To the despair of my boys, the beautiful game does very little for me.

Our visitors include local colleagues and dignitaries who join us by the pool. The hotel also receives a number of young ladies, who come and join a few of the gentlemen for drinks of an evening. I saw some of them in the village outside the hotel, where I popped in to buy a packet of dried Peak Milk for my tea, and stayed for a chat at the bar. They’re so friendly here. A very nice lady gave me her coffee-coloured little boy to hold.

I do wish you could get a good cup of tea here. Fortunately Mrs M allowed me to bring some Cooperative tea bags, even though these aren’t normally allowed in number 72, where the naked leaf prevails, as does proper butter.

A lot of the talk is whether or not it’s worth trying to get out by Accra Nairobi and Cairo to Frankfurt, or just waiting for things to change. Most of us are making the best of it. The other night, I managed to separate a young man from his Blackberry where he was constantly looking up the latest ash forecast, by persuading him to order a lobster, on the grounds that it would be slightly cheaper than a club sandwich and chips. The restaurant served up four grilled lobsters without blinking, but not before the waitress had popped out to apologise that the kitchen had run out of rice. Would we mind chips instead?