Monday I’m on holiday and, I must say, I’m feeling pretty jolly chipper. We’re in Cornwall. Lots of fish to point at. I do love a good point at a good fish. Although we’re keeping the cameras out, this time, so we don’t get photo captions about things being “fishy”. Plus, there’s always the danger of inadvertently pointing at something non-sustainable.
Today, though, I’m surfing! Like Keanu Reeves in Point Break! Only lying down, and in a really cosy wetsuit.
Back on the sand, George calls from London.
“We’ve got a problem,” he says.
“But I haven’t,” I say. “Not even a herring.”
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“What?” says George.
“Actually,” I say, “I did get a selfie pointing at some fish fingers. In the village shop. Although I forbade Sam from tweeting it. I mean, you just couldn’t tell. It could have been choc-ices.”
“This is more important than fish,” says George.
“Nothing is more important than fish,” I tell him, gravely.
George says he hates it when I’m like this, and he’ll call in the morning.
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This is why I love getting away. You need to sometimes. Because honestly, the job? Sometimes you just feel you’re wading through s***.
Tuesday Surfing again. So nice to just lie back in the suspiciously foamy waves. Far from the foetid stink of Westminster.
“Listen,” said George, when he called this morning. “We’re getting it in the neck about the honours list. People reckon you’re putting all of your friends into the House of Lords.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” I said.
“Is it?” said George, sounding edgy.
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“Definitely,” I said. “Most of them are there already.”
Wednesday “I’ve got bad news,” says my press secretary, when we finish surfing, “but I don’t want to upset you, and thereby jeopardise my future honour.”
“Who says you’re getting an honour?” I say.
“Seriously?” she says.
“No, of course you are,” I say, and we high-five. “Spill it.”
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Unhappy turn of phrase, says my press secretary. Because they’ve been informed of a sewage overflow. Which we’ve been swimming through. And the press are bound to find out.
“It’s like a metaphor,” she says.
I get it, I say. What should I do?
“I recommend,” she says, “the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.”
Thursday Back to London last night. Nobody knows about the poo, yet. Maybe we got away with it.
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Bit of a drama, though, when Sam went to tuck Nancy in, and she wasn’t there, and we suddenly remembered our sandwich stop on the A386 near Okehampton and wondered if we’d left her in the Little Chef. But it turned out she was just brushing her teeth with the nanny.
At lunchtime, Boris and George turn up.
“Listen, old chap,” says Boris, “forget what the rotters say. When a chap works as hard as we do, he gets an honour or goes to the Lords. Otherwise what’s the point?”
Boris is wearing shorts and a sun visor.
“Still though,” says George. “It looks bad. We need to make it clear that people have earned these things. They can’t just expect them.”
“Exactly,” says Boris. “It’s not like your baronetcy.”
George bristles, and says they worked hard for that, too.
“When?” snorts Boris.
“In 1629,” says George.
Friday “Bad news,” says my press secretary, “but the press have found out about the sewage thing.”
“Somebody leaked,” I shout.
“South West Water,” she agrees. “Literally.”
“Not this week,” I say. “Oh God. Any other week, but not this one.”
“Just don’t mention the Privy Council,” she says.
*according to Hugo Rifkind