Bob's Your Uncle

by Hamer Shawcross

“How do I look?”

Mark looked up from his computer, where he had been idly perusing the frothings of Jackie Ashley, and submitted his colleague to a full, considered stare.

“Like a wanker,” he told Simon eventually, turning back to Comment is Free.

Simon, resplendent in a black dinner jacket with matching trousers and bow-tie smiled complacently as if this had been a compliment.

“Excellent,” he murmured, examining his face minutely in a small hand mirror.

“I wouldn’t do that if you’re off to the Sports and Social,” Mark advised him. “You’ll get a dart in the head.”

“Am I likely to be going to the Sports dressed like this?” enquired Simon witheringly.

“You might be. It’s karaoke tonight – you could be the fat one from G8.”

Simon chose not to dignify this with an answer but instead reverently handed Mark a thick, gilt-edged invitation card that bore his name in carefully rendered calligraphy.

Mark glanced at the invitation. “Cecilians? What’s that?”

“A Parliamentary club. A pretty exclusive Parliamentary club, actually.”

“Surprised I haven’t been invited then,” rejoined Mark, tossing the card onto Simon’s end of the desk. “Us graduates of Steeple Polytechnic University are an influential lot, you know Simon. You’re extremely lucky to be working with me. Anyway, why are you so excited about munching canapés with a bunch of Tories?”

“It’s not just Tories,” Simon countered, flushing slightly. “It’s Oxbridge people, mainly, but not entirely. After all, it’s hardly the fault of a fellow if the ridiculous attitude of Cambridge means that they’re passed over for some oaf with an A Level in media studies or something. Ridiculous.”

“But thank heaven for the Cecilians, eh?” grinned Mark at his oblivious comrade. “At least there are still some sanctuaries for privilege still left in the world.”

***

The Churchill Room is located at the end of the dining room corridor: a long, tapering walk along a rich green carpet flanked on either side by bright white walls, lit up occasionally by bursts of green light. On the left hand side are smaller rooms, laid for either a dinner or a reception and on the right a series of coat hooks tended to by black-and-white clad assistants. As Simon passed the small throngs of stiffly-suited men and women in sparkling dinner gowns who fussed over their coats and scarves outside each room, he felt an enormous pride, the pride that comes from being young, well-connected, and part of the club that was, to these outsiders, a glorious and intimidating novelty. Any lingering uneasiness he may have felt at Mark’s pointed jocularity was buried under his soaring self-regard.

With these admirable and comradely sentiments nestled smugly in his bosom, he affected an air of nonchalance at the door of the Churchill Room as he casually flashed his invitation and gave his name to the waiter.

The tall ceiling was almost invisible under a thick, low-lying cloud of perfumed cigar smoke which was being projected upwards in straight plumes by thick-set men all attired in the same manner as Simon. A cacophony of chatter, interspersed by the occasional loud hoot or bray, filled the pockets of air not already occupied by smoke and exotically dressed young women moved elegantly and nimbly around the dinner jackets, like tropical fish around dark rocks.

The large paintings of Conservative statesmen from times passed glowered down approvingly at this, the next generation entitled to their legacy; their memories occasionally toasted by raised champagne flutes and perfect pronunciation.

“Simon!”

Simon looked over to the shouted greeting and saw a cluster of young men, bedecked like penguins, who were busy consuming the plate of fishy canapés proffered by a surly looking waitress with dark skin.

“Binky!” roared Simon back, hurrying over. “Haven’t seen you in years, you old sod. What’ve you been up to?”

Binky was tall, fair and florid, and was holding a smoked salmon blini in one hand, and a blonde in a red dress in the other. “Oh this and that, this and that, you know. I was in banking but I, er, I’m on a career break at the moment.”

Fired and now unemployed, thought Simon – somewhat uncharitably – to himself. “That sounds inviting,” he replied. “Gives you time to get back into the political game at any rate, eh?”

“Oh, quite, quite,” said Binky, momentarily confused as to which hand his smoked salmon was in. “I’ve been very involved in the Cameron project, you know,” he grinned at him. “Not long now before your lot are out, old boy.”

“Project Cameron, eh?” said Simon, arranging his face into the required expression of awe.

“Indeed. Anyway, how about you? Are you still working here?”

“That’s right,” Simon sighed with affected weariness. “Still a special advisor,” he informed his old friend inaccurately. “Tom’s only a back bencher but he’s definitely marked as one to watch.”

It was Binky’s turn to display the required facial expression at these words, to which the description “wildly exaggerated” would have counted as something of an understatement.

“Still,” countered Binky, “good to put our stint at the Oxford Union to good use, isn’t it? I remember when I was President…”

Simon noticed that the eyes of the rest of the group became somewhat glazed at these words; Binky was never short of an anecdote about his distant, if glorious, reign over the Oxford University debating society.

A flash illuminated the room and everyone turned to stare at a group that had assembled for a photograph. At the centre of a line of several corpulent Tory politicians was an attractive young woman who was wearing the merest slip of gold and giggling coquettishly at a grotesque suggestion made to her by the man on her right.

“Christ,” muttered Binky appreciatively, jolted out of his reminiscence by the sight, “look at the tits on that!”

There was some harrumphing approval from Binky’s friends who were admiring the scene before them.

“I tell you what Clarissa,” Binky addressed the blonde on his arm, “if you -”

“- it’s Georgiana actually,” corrected his date.

“Is it really.” Binky still couldn’t take his eyes of the girl in gold. “If you looked a bit more like that, I’d make sure I had some snaps of you!”

He leered at her unattractively and, for good measure, hit her firmly across the buttocks. The surrounding men began laughing uproariously; Simon and Georgiana joined in, somewhat uncertainly.

“Come on Churchy!” Binky brayed at Simon. “Have the Labour Party given you a sense of humour bypass?”

Simon laughed with a little more conviction.

“Why do you call him Churchy?” Georgiana asked, apparently unfazed at her recent treatment.

“Well,” replied Henry Binksholme-Chatsworth, preparing to explain the joke, his surname is Church!”

A snort of laughter from the waitress with the canapés recalled them all to her presence. Binky glared at her, and she scuttled off, still smirking.

Simon took his leave of his old university comrade, and prepared to do a circuit of the room. He grabbed a glass of champagne from a table just behind him.

“…state of her, carrying on like that. Did you see her shoes? Like totally last season.”

“Well, she always was putting herself about. Did you hear…?”

He began a leisurely procession around the room, where loose clusters of men stood chatting animatedly, occasionally breaking off to hoot approval at a passing dress.

“…knew him at Eton of course. Top quality front bench, old man. Top drawer all of them.”

“As I always say, you get what you pay for in this life,” rejoined the other man. “Unless we’re talking about the public services!”

“Jeremy,” stated a heavily hair-gelled young man to Simon suddenly, holding his hand out. “Saw you talking to old Binky earlier – damn shame about him having to leave Cholmondley-Hoffington. His family have worked there for four generations you know. I take it you’re involved at CCHQ?”

“No, I work for a Labour MP actually. I….” Simon continued for some moments in this strain, but as soon as the word “Labour” had passed his lips, Jeremy’s eyes clouded with disappointment and began skittishly glancing over his shoulder.

“Good for you,” Jeremy interrupted. “Inclusivity is very important to the Cecilians, after all. Now, oh! James! Excuse me, there’s someone over there I need to talk to.”

Simon was left, feeling rather foolish, on his own.

“You said WHAT to the Queen?” an ancient voice shouted from the chairs behind Simon, making him jump. An extremely elderly Lord with a walking stick and a whistling hearing aid was attempting to hear something his companion – a similarly aged gentleman with an ear trumpet – had just said.

“I suppose it does,” yelled Lord Ear Trumpet back. “A good clean and this room would look almost respectable.”

“Receptacle?” Lord Hearing Aid leant in inquisitively. “I thought you put your wine glass down over there?”

Simon grinned to himself.

“Having fun?” a sultry voice enquired of him. It was the young lady in the gold dress.

“Oh, er, yes,” he stuttered back. “Very nice. Good canapés. Do you, er, come here often?” He winced at himself.

“Quite often,” she purred back. “I’m Horatia, I do the “Party Girl” column in the Sunday News. I practically live here, actually.”

“Of course, I recognise you!” said Simon untruthfully, attempting to keep his eyes north of her monumental bosom. “You were on Newsnight the other day as well, weren’t you?”

“That’s right,” she looked at him. “Do you know Dickie?”

For a moment Simon thought that she was making an inappropriate and highly interesting suggestion but, following the line of her eye, realised that she was talking about the Rt Hon Richard Whitecastle MP. “Dickie” was a former Cabinet Minister, prodigious shagger, and held firm views on the subjects of administering sharp shocks to teenage criminals, asylum seekers, and single mothers.

“Not really. Why, do you?”

“God no!” she hooted. “But that’s why I’m here really. One of the chaps said they needed some totty to spice up Dickie’s party and thought I had just the right measurements.”

Simon looked at her. “And you volunteered?”

“Of course!” she declared airily. “It’s a huge opportunity to meet people – networking, darling, networking. And anyway,” she confided in him, “don’t you think Dickie has a sexy kind of raffish charm?”

Dickie chose that moment to release a belch of almost Richter-scale ferocity that was heroically ignored by the short-skirted young lady who had almost been blown off her stillettoed feet by the blast.

“It was the first thing Dickie did when he became an MP, setting up the Cecilians,” she continued in the sort of tone Labour Party members reserve for the discussion of the minimum wage.

“Damn right I would,” came a loud voice behind them, which they were both clearly meant to hear. “But I’d make sure I had an extra thick condom on first.”

They turned to see two port-bloated MPs leering over Horatia unashamedly. Simon coloured angrily but Horatia merely giggled flirtatiously and turned back to their conversation.

“It’s mainly Conservatives in the Cecilians, then?” he asked drily, handing her a glass of champagne.

“You don’t know about the Cecilians?” she looked at him astonished. “You’re Labour aren’t you? Even so, don’t they teach you anything at Manchester Metropolitan University -”

“- I was at Oxford actually -”

“- these days? The Cecilians take their name from Robert Cecil, later Lord Salisbury.”

Simon looked at her blankly.

“His nephew was Arthur Balfour!”

“Right.”

She sighed. “Lord Salisbury didn’t want to hand over the office of the Prime Minister to just anyone when he gave it up, so he made sure his nephew got it. That’s where we Cecilians take our name from - you know, networking for a select few,” she concluded approvingly.

“This Arthur Balfour,” Simon was still struggling with the particulars of this nepotistic experiment, “was he any good then?”

“Oh, bound to be darling, bound to be.”

Plumbing the deepest recesses of his memory, Simon tried to recall whether the Arthur Balfour they were discussing was the same Prime Minister who split the Conservative Party, and lost both his seat and the general election, and assisted the Labour Party in their endeavour to become the second party in British politics.

“Why?”

She looked at him in exasperation. “Because he was Lord Salisbury's nephew. I mean, I’m all for meritocracy and all that, but sometimes you’ve just got to acknowledge that a decent education and a family history of public service is what’s best for Britain.”

“Like the House of Lords.”

“Yes, but for how much longer?” she asked him seriously. “You lot want to do away with it so you can get more glorified councillors in the second chamber – you don’t even think about the specialist knowledge and experience that many Lords currently bring to the debate.”

“WHOSE KNICKERS?” Lord Ear Trumpet chose this moment query of his companion.

Horatia moved her chest in closer and attempted a look of coquetry. “Oh dear! I’m afraid I’ve shocked you.”

Simon, outraged egalitarian principles more than mollified by the proximity of cleavage, smiled back at her. “Not at all,” he purred smoothly. “We’re not totally uncivilised in the Labour Party.”

It was at this point that Mark fell through the wall.

***

“Utter disgrace,” Simon was still fuming an hour later in the Sports and Social, not at all pacified by the pint of Spitfire and bag of beef jerky that a distinctly unrepentant Mark had bought him.

“UTTER DISGRACE!” he repeated more loudly.

“Yeah, okay, keep your pants on,” whined Mark. “It was an accident. I was leaning on the secret door.”

The Churchill Room shares a wall with the Lord’s Bar, beloved of researchers across the Parliamentary Estate. For some reason, there is a door opposite the bar which is almost invisible to the naked eye, and certainly to the drunken one. It is not unheard of for a rather beered-up bag-carrier to lean on the opening and tumble straight through, to the astonishment of the guests on the other side.

“You spilled Stella Artois on Horatia’s dress!” raged Simon. “God, I’m going to be a laughing stock,” he held his head in his hands and began rocking back and forth.

“I already see you as a laughing stock for going in the first place,” Mark assured him kindly. “Would you take more notice of my feelings if I went to Roedean or had big boobs? Anyway, what’s the problem? I offered her my last mini Cheddar.”

Simon glowered at him.

“Thank me later,” said Mark, munching on a handful of salty peanuts. “You needed reminding of your political principles and Bob’s your uncle! There I was.”

Polling Day

by Hamer Shawcross

Polling day.

The pale sunlight shone through the rather grimy window of Tom Gash MP’s constituency office, and Mark heaved another windy sigh as he looked down at the distinctly unprepossessing Weaselthorpe street below.

Several truants in school uniform were using their mobile ring tones as mating calls in the hope of attracting the two tittering teenagers who loitered around the enormous sign advertising the local MP’s services. World-weary pensioners kept their heads down as they shuffled past the youths, and litter blew like tumbleweed down the street, unchecked by the presence of several large, grey litter bins. A newspaper, caught by a sudden gust, whipped into the air and almost obscured the amateurishly painted words: “Tom Gash MP: working hard FOR YOU!” Directly underneath this shining beacon of contemporary democracy was a garish pink signboard advertising “Nancy’s Naughty Nickers.”

Presumably, thought Mark, the “K” was removed to enhance the alliterative effect. Even so, Tom could have chosen a better venue for his Weaselthorpe base than directly above a lingerie outfit.

The constituency office was packed to bursting with chattering OAPs, biscuit crumbs and discarded tea-mugs, whilst the floor was papered erratically with various “Vote Labour” leaflets, posters, and strips of stickers. Up against the wall, like some squat deity, rumbled the tea urn which was producing evermore treacle-like beverages for the thirsty volunteers.

In the middle of the chaos towered the massive form of Tom Gash MP, whose unruly black hair was looking even more windswept than usual. He was dressed in a pair of jeans that went right up to his nipples, a pair of sturdy walking boots, a luminous orange cagoule and was talking with some animation.

“Look Bert, there’s nothing I can do about it - your leaflets were not delivered this morning and we’re just going to have to use the generic Labour ones.”

Bert, one of the Labour candidates for the ward, stood before him exuding an aura of annoyance, unread council minutes, departmental guidance notes, and incomprehensible planning decisions. He had been the Labour councillor for the Black Dragon ward as long as anyone could remember and, although he refused to recognise the fact, this was largely down to a core Labour vote, low turnout, and the fact that nobody met him very often.

“But I designed them specifically for the area we’re going to this morning,” Bert intoned, slowly and nasally. “The leaflet explains in full the exact ramifications of Departmental Circular 9384/B, and I wanted to supplement some of the points raised by the Area Committee on the doorstep. What am I supposed to do now?”

“I daresay your residents will survive. Hey! Hey! Mrs Applewhite!” Tom roared irritably at one of the septuagenarians around the tea urn. “Did we get a Bert’s leaflets delivered here this morning?”

Mrs Applewhite was a sweet looking old lady with white hair, a comfortable cardigan and a set of knitting needles attached to which was something pink, shapeless, and fluffy.

“No dear,” she told the bristling MP. “But we did get three hundred of these.”

In her other hand she held out a thong which had the words “HEAVY LOAD” emblazoned across the front in red letters. In any other place of work this would have raised an eyebrow at the very least but in Tom Gash’s office, the fantastic was often the everyday.

Fifteen minutes later, Tom had managed to pack a still-disgruntled Bert and a lugubrious Mark into the back of his car like two gloomy bloodhounds, and they were off to engage the public in the kind of genial doorstep banter that is eagerly anticipated by every political activist.

Silence reigned.

They pulled up at a street of freshly painted houses which were flanked on either side by a stained tower-block, and piled out of the car.

“This should be a nice one,” Tom informed them cheerfully, rummaging around in his pockets trying to find his rosette and scattering several chocolate biscuits all over the pavement as he did so. “We’ve had the whole estate re-painted, had new windows added, and worked with the council on getting adaptations for disabled access. Bert here’s like a hero, aren’t you Bert?”

Mark looked at his clipboard a little uncertainly. “What’s Voter ID?”

Tom beamed at him. “You’ll love this system, Mark, it’s brilliant. It was developed by some bright sod at Labour HQ. Basically, we don’t ask anyone’s opinions any more – we just ask them a couple of questions, perform some sort of mathematical calculation and hey presto! We know how they’re going to vote!”

“Shouldn’t we be engaging them in discourse?” asked Mark. “Have a debate, find out what people really think? Isn’t that what democracy’s about?”

“I agree,” said Bert. “I have one copy of my leaflet here at least, and I want to go over – in detail – the minutes of the Labour Group’s meeting on planning committee decisions.”

Bert shoved a leaflet bearing the legend “HOW STATUTORY GUIDANCE ON DEPARTMENTAL CIRCULAR 43532/B CAN BE EFFECTIVE IN PLANNING DISPUTES” under their noses.

“Actually, I think we’d better stick to the script,” intervened Tom, as Mark began nodding hastily.

“So, my first guy is marked down as “Strong Labour”. Should be a piece of piss, right?”

Tom nodded encouragingly at his bag-carrier and, having loaded up him up with a massive bag of glossy Labour Party leaflets and a roll of stickers, departed for the other side of the street.

In spite of the encouraging words from the sheet on his clipboard, Mark couldn’t help but view the house in front of him with some apprehension. In spite of its newly painted veneer, it had an indefinable air of ill-kept menace about it. The long grass entwined its fingers around several discarded washing up bowls containing a quantity of dark, dank rainwater and there was an elderly car on bricks in the driveway. It reminded Mark of a girl who, whilst beautiful the night before, had gone to bed drunk and in her makeup and had woken up the next morning a slatternly copy of what she resembled the previous day.

There was also a tattered England flag draped from the upper window; the World Cup was long since over.

Taking solace in the comforting words “Strong Labour”, he knocked on the door, which was answered by muffled sounds of barking and swearing within. At last a tattooed troglodyte appeared, accompanied by a large dog which was eyeing Mark in the manner in which Portcullis aspirants eye the sushi counter in Selfridges.

“Hello, my name’s Mark and I’m here from your local Labour Party. I wonder if you could answer a few quick questions?”

The troglodyte lit a cigarette and eyed Mark belligerently through the plumes of acrid smoke.

He pressed on. “Who are you going to vote for in the upcoming local elections?”

“BNP.”

“I see,” said Mark after an uncomfortable pause, glancing at his sheet. No, it definitely had Mr Flintstone down as “Strong Labour”. “And if you had a second choice, who would you vote for?”

“BNP.”

Mark decided that cowardice was the better part of valour and, still being eyeballed, thanked the man for his time and determined to try next door which was marked down as “Weak Labour”.

The house was slightly more welcoming in its aspect than the previous dwelling and, with lightened spirits he knocked on the door. A harassed looking woman in her early thirties answered. He began his introductory patter but was interrupted.

“I’m sorry, I’m never voting Labour again,” she declared with the relish of one who does not get much opportunity to vent her spleen. “Name me one thing they’ve done for this area. Go on. Just one!”

She looked at him triumphantly.

“Um,” Mark replied, looking down the row of brightly painted houses with their newly tiled roofs. “What about the renovations?”

The woman waved it away. “Not before time, neither. This Labour Government has betrayed people like me – you just don’t care about us do you? You’ve done nothing for us, you’re worse than the Tories. That’s why I don’t bother voting any more. Now, I’ve got to get my kid to school.”

“The new school?” asked Mark, as the door closed.

Turning to light a cigarette, Mark watched Tom on the other side of the road. The door had been opened by a man who, from his body language, was hostile. But after a few minutes of good humoured debate they were both shaking hands and parting on the friendliest of terms.

“How do you do it?” he asked his boss miserably as Tom approached him beaming with the particular happiness that MPs feel when they’ve been praised by a constituent. “My Voter ID’s all wrong,” he added petulantly.

Tom shrugged and dived off to waylay a passing constituent in electoral banter. Mark sighed, stubbed out his cigarette, and proceeded to the next house.

Several hours, four near misses with large dogs, and three slammed doors later, Tom proposed a lunch break.

“Good news from the office, Bert,” the MP informed them as they walked back towards the car. “Your leaflets have been delivered and Mrs Applewhite’s getting them put in envelopes now. We can deliver them this afternoon!”

He grinned at them as if announcing a Lottery win.

When they returned, the office was a hive of activity. Mrs Applewhite had fourteen OAPs sat around a table which was littered with plain envelopes with the words “A message from your Labour councillor Bert Railey” stamped on the front, plates of shortbread biscuits, and dirty coffee mugs.

“Here you go dears,” she smiled at them, handing them bulging bags of the enveloped leaflets. “All done!”

Bert cheered up immeasurably and they departed again on a leafleting mission.

“They key with these,” Tom informed his bag-carrier indistinctly through a mouthful of biscuit, “is to be careful. Whatever you do, don’t put your fingers through the letter box.”

He displayed an enormous hand for Mark’s inspection. It was scarred with what looked like teeth marks. “General election 1992. It was quite a day.”

The work was backbreaking. Mark soon realised what his boss meant, and he approached each letterbox with a differing sense of dread. The best were the ones that didn’t have all the stiff flappy bits going on and were in the middle of the door, allowing a simple open-drop action. The worst were the floor-level slots with the draft excluders, especially as it was not unusual for a small Yorkshire terrier to lie in wait in hope of a quick bite. Mark found himself almost nostalgic for the upfront ferocity of the large dogs he’d experienced in the morning; you could hear those buggers coming. The little ones were far sneakier, having all the stealth and cunning of a large cat awaiting its prey on the plains of the Serengeti.

Hours passed. “A message from your Labour councillor Bert Railey” seemed to imprint itself on his mind, and he mentally repeated the words with each delivery. Yup, his dreams were going to be tedious tonight.

At six o clock, much to Mark’s relief, Tom called time. They returned, weary and sore to the office where they tended their aching limbs and war wounds with sticky plaster and the liberal application of Deep Heat.

“I think I’ve pulled something in my thigh,” Mark informed Mrs Applewhite.

“Never mind, dear,” she counselled. “Have a cup of tea.”

Mark drank the thick liquid gratefully and began to consume his thousandth biscuit of the day.

At that moment the door burst open, and a rather lurid figure carrying a huge box appeared. The woman was dressed from her peroxide head to stilettoed toe in pink leather, and was wearing the kind of makeup that seemed to extend beyond the borders of that which it was attempting to enhance.

It was Nancy from the lingerie shop downstairs.

“Tom, my darling?” she called out in her harsh cockney twang. “I’ve got something for you!” She winked suggestively at the MP.

“Alright, Nancy,” he greeted her affably. “Coming to hear about the brave new dawn of socialism?”

“Ooooooooh! You tease!” she giggled in a monstrous parody of a flirt. “Maybe later darling, if you’re good. No, I’m here on business – I think these are yours?”

She handed the box to Tom, who opened it and paled.

It contained several hundred leaflets bearing the intense visage of Cllr Bert Railey and the words “HOW STATUTORY GUIDANCE ON DEPARTMENTAL CIRCULAR 43532/B CAN BE EFFECTIVE IN PLANNING DISPUTES”

“But, but,” struggled Tom, “if Bert’s leaflets are here, what have we been delivering all afternoon?”

“Well that’s what I came to see you about: I think the postman must have got our mail mixed up this morning. Have you had a box of my leaflets delivered up here by mistake? Like this one?”

She produced a leaflet, as garishly pink as she was, which appeared to be advertising a form of exotic party one undertook in revealing underwear.

“Good Lord!” murmured Mark as Tom, seizing the leaflet, turned to Mrs Applewhite.

“Which,” he asked in a tone of controlled calm, “leaflet have you been putting in envelopes today?”

“The pink one, dear. You said that we were to envelope the box of leaflets that were delivered to the office.”

Bert looked as if he was about to faint. “We’ve delivered a thousand leaflets inviting my voters to a cheap sex party!” he moaned.

“Less of the cheap, you,” admonished Nancy, haughtily.

“You didn’t think it was a bit odd,” pursued Tom, “that Bert appeared to be inviting people to, er, “get hot action” instead of asking them to vote for him?”

“Well, when you’ve seen as many Labour leaflets as we have, you don’t tend to read them much,” Mrs Applewhite replied, to vigorous nodding from the team of OAPS.

Bert recovered his voice. “This is all your fault!” he yelled at Nancy.

“My fault! It’s not my problem your lot don’t bloody read!”

“Now, come on Bert, it’s -” Tom intervened.

Mark had had enough. He went to the fridge and, finding a can of Heineken, cracked it open and sat down quietly in the corner whilst the battle raged on the other side of the office.

“That’s it!” Bert was wailing. “I’m done for.”

“Don’t overreact, there’s still time. What we’ve got to do is -”

The bag-carrier took another slurp of beer and closed his eyes.

“I don’t know what he’s shouting about.” The voice of Mrs Applewhite in his ear called him back to his senses. “We’ve been getting his deadly boring leaflets for years. If you ask me, plenty of my friends will turn out to vote for the manifesto you’ve been delivering all afternoon – it’s more exciting than another message on departmental circulars. In my opinion, his majority might increase for the first time in quarter of a decade,” she concluded with a somewhat raffish twinkle in her eye.

Mark snorked into his beer.

A Sitting Friday

by Hamer Shawcross

The watery sunlight of an April morning filtered through the sparkling ceiling of Portcullis House, illuminating the groups of chattering research assistants as they sipped coffee out of large cardboard cups and exchanged gossip as well as thinly-veiled snipes about absent colleagues.

Mark sat outside the Dispatch Box cafeteria, shaded by the tall leafy trees that flanked the always broken water feature, and watched miserably as cheerful Labour bag-carriers in jeans scurried around groups of elegantly dressed Tory researchers like sparrows around clusters of colourful birds of paradise. Where bag-carriers meet there is always a lot of peering over shoulders going on; after all, you never knew when a special advisor – or even a Minister - might walk by and, perhaps, consent to talk to you. But Mark was only viewed with cursory interest by such aspirants.

“Who does he work for?”

“No one important.”

He sighed, and looked at his rapidly congealing latte without enthusiasm. Even here – the seat of parliamentary democracy – whilst the collection of models that the Conservatives had appeared to be latterly employing as their “assistants” strutted their stuff for universal delectation, it was possible to be depressed. And no situation can depress a bag-carrier more than the news that the boss is going to interrupt the relative repose of a Friday with his presence.

Friday is traditionally the day where research assistants dress down (even the Tories try their best) and wander in at 10am to spend the day in leisurely pursuit of casework and constituency queries, punctuated by a long lunch in Bellamy’s and finishing with a swift pint in the Lords’ Bar at 5.30pm. The Members of Parliament have decamped to their constituencies the previous evening where they spend the next three days stolidly (and with increasing despair) dealing with such complaints as “I want you to fix my guttering,” and “my hoover’s broken. What are YOU going to do about it?”

All queries from agitated members of the press and others can be dealt with by the beauteous words: “he's not here - call the other office." Smugly, bag-carriers ponder on the fact that the constituency staff, after four days of doing exactly the same to them, are getting a taste of their own medicine.

But this doesn’t apply, of course, if your boss has decided that he is to spend the day in Parliament getting in the way, scuppering your lunch plans, and attempting to get down with your friends in the Lords’ after hours - every bit as mortifying as your dad’s attempts to do so whilst you were a teenager.

“Hello, hello!”

Mark arranged his face into an expression of cheerful geniality – which resembled more of a Mr Burns style leer than anything else – and met the eyes of his employer, Tom Gash MP.

Tom Gash was a huge bear of a man whose over-sized head was topped by an explosion of black curls that all the gel in Croydon could not tame. His suits were baggy and tight in all the wrong places, and the pair of Buddy Holly style spectacles perched on his rather chubby cheeks magnified his eyes into large, dark orbs that could go from cheerful to childishly sulky in the course of one conversation with arch-enemy Donald Sligo MP, the Deputy Chief Whip.

“So,” Tom rubbed two ham-like hands together. “Let’s go and meet our tour group!”

He bounded off with the enthusiasm of an obese gazelle in the direction of the escalators, his bag-carrier trailing unenthusiastically in his wake.

“Where are the other two?” asked Tom of Mark.

Mark bit his lip but answered loyally that Tom’s principal members of staff were, as the euphemism goes, “working from home” today.

“Excellent!” beamed Tom. “All hands to the deck, eh?”

In spite of himself, Mark grinned at his boss. “So what are you doing here today anyway?”

“I need to spend more time in Parliament,” Tom replied as they strode under the delicately carved archways of Carriage Gates, where several drivers were leaning up against sleek black cars watching their cigarette smoke contort itself in the gentle wind. “I’ll meet the tour group from the constituency and I thought that this afternoon I’d go into the Chamber and get involved in the Private Members’ Bills debates. What’s on?”

“Well, there’s the South Coast Endangered Birds (Preservation) Bill.”

“What’s that?”

“Something to do with forcibly removing eggs that get stuck up the pipes of endangered marine birds I think.”

Tom paled slightly at the mental image, but soon recovered himself.

“Ah, the cockpit of the nation, eh? D’you know, Mark, I’m thinking of spending every Friday in Westminster.”

It was Mark’s turn to blanch.

“Really,” he squeaked, trying to keep his voice even. “But…but what about your surgeries? The people of Weaselthorpe need you in the constituency, Tom!”

Tom waved this away modestly as they passed through the imposing oak doors into the lofty stone-lined coolness of Westminster Hall. “I can hold an extra one on Saturday or Sunday. But I’m never going to get anywhere if I don’t get my name about in Parliament. And it’ll give us all more time to really sort out those difficult cases – we just don’t have the time at the moment. What do you think?”

Not trusting himself to voice an opinion that was not couched in the tones of despair and laden with expletives, Mark said nothing. Tom Gash didn’t seem to notice the sudden depression on the part of his bag-carrier and he continued to talk cheerfully of his plan until they came upon Sovereign’s Entrance.

Sovereign’s Entrance is, as the name suggests, the door that Her Maj uses as access to Parliament so she can delight us all with her excellent reading skills when she makes the Queen’s Speech. Today, like most other mornings, the Entrance was not decorated by soldiers in black and scarlet and delightful debutantes fluttering about their sovereign like aristocratic butterflies, but rather by about forty thousand children, several harassed looking teachers, various confused looking OAPs and the obligatory belligerent tourists who were trying to insist that this was the entrance to Madame Tussauds.

“Alright Mark,” a policeman greeted him as they waded through the rabble. “NO!” he bawled suddenly at the tourists who continued to assail him with maps and angry, unintelligible words. “It’s at LONDON BRIDGE, understand? LONDON BRIDGE!”

“Our group here yet?” Mark attempted to address the Commons tour organiser over the chaos. “Weaselthorpe?”

He was pointed in the direction of a disparate grouping of about ten adults and several trendy looking student types.

Tom grinned as he recognised faces from his local Labour Party and barged his way towards them, scattering tourists like human confetti behind him.

“Frank,” he beamed holding out a hand, “great you could come.”

Frank Lewes, known privately to Tom’s bag-carriers as Shouty Frank for his explosions of rage in CLP meetings, eyed his elected representative suspiciously. A vein was throbbing on his temple and his eyes were starting to bulge.

“Having a busy day, Tom?” he enquired of the MP, his eyes narrowed.

“Always, Frank, always,” Tom sighed back, as Frank began to redden and swell.

“Not in the constituency then?” Frank’s voice was dangerously calm. Mark, recognising the danger signs took the precaution of talking a step backwards. He was just in time.

“I suppose slumming it in Weaselthorpe is not as exciting as…” His voice faltered, and then exploded with the force of a small bomb. “SPENDING YOUR TIME HERE HAVING LONG LUNCHES AT THE TAXPAYERS’ EXPENSE AND THEN FALLING ASLEEP IN THE CHAMBER -”

Urgent action was called for; Tom decided to blame the staff.

“Mark’s fallen behind with his casework,” Tom informed Frank, both disloyally and inaccurately. “I need to spend a day or two keeping my employees on the straight and narrow.” He sighed and looked at Mark resentfully. “I would love to be in Weaselthorpe but you know how it is.”

Although purple with outrage at the injustice of this, Mark was a good researcher and understood that no greater love hath a bag-carrier than this: to lay down his self-respect for his boss. He managed to smile apologetically at Frank and attempted a look of contrition.

Frank was sufficiently mollified to allow the tour to begin.

“Okay guys,” Mark took over. “Enjoy your tour, and Tom and I will meet you in Central Lobby after it’s finished to give you a quick talk about the work we do for you.” There were nods and smiles from everyone apart from Frank, who still looked in danger of imminent eruption.

“As if we don’t already know what he gets up to on our time,” hissed a voice.

Mark’s ears, finely attuned to such things after many long years of working with the public, noticed the sarcastic malignity.

He began to be afraid.

***

An hour and a half later and Tom Gash MP, trailing his research assistant, strode in the direction of Central Lobby.

“You see, this is why I need to be here more,” he declared. “I’ve completely emptied my inbox this morning.”

If he were feeling churlish, Mark might have pointed out that emptying one’s inbox into the inbox of another does not constitute work done, but he lacked the energy.

They arrived in Central Lobby, the opulence and bustle making Mark’s eyes ache, and looked around for their group.

Surrounded by busily texting students, and shaded by a marble statue of Gladstone, stood three of their tour group.

“Where are the others?”

Mrs Applewhite shrugged. “I don’t know. They just wandered off.”

Mark, more strongly than ever, was sensing a disturbance in the Force but his master seemed blissfully unaware that anything might be wrong.

“They’ve probably just gone for a pint in the Red Lion,” he told Mark bracingly. “Can I leave you with these ladies? I need to get into the Chamber,” he explained to his constituents. “I’m speaking in a Private Members’ Bill debate on, er…”

“Eggs stuck up birds,” volunteered Mark helpfully.

“Yes. Big issue. Very important,” Tom assured them vaguely, catching the eye of one of his friends and scurrying off. “Good seeing you again – enjoy your day!”

Mark was left to make the speeches to the depleted tour group. He spoke of the hard work that Tom Gash MP put in on behalf of his constituents, the speeches he made, the long hours, and the small thanks. He touched on the work he did as a bag-carrier and couldn’t resist bolstering up the verbals slightly, although judging from the awestruck looks on the faces of the OAPs he fancied he might have overdone it a little.

“And that’s it,” he concluded, hoping that nobody was going to ask him when he last shared pasta and white wine with the Blairs. “Any questions?”

A few minutes later, having waved goodbye to the still wide-eyed pensioners, he was left on his own under the vast, glittering chandelier that hangs like a gold-plated glutton over the to-ing and fro-ing of Central Lobby.

Weaselthorpe Labour Party had gone to ground in the House of Commons.

This did not, by any stretch of the imagination, augur well.

***

The Chamber was hot, and a Liberal Democrat MP (who felt strongly that egg-bound endangered birds should not be given the assistance of the state) was talking in the long-winded and pedantic manner that only that Party seemed to have off to an art form.

“…if I could return, Madam Deputy Speaker, for a moment to the speech by the Right Honourable Member for Clapham. I take issue with his interpretation of the data gleaned by the University of Wessex which demonstrates, contrary to his contention…”

After the initial adrenalin-laced excitement of being in Parliament on a Friday, Tom realised that the long hours and late nights were beginning to catch up with him. He felt his eyes begin to close, and waves of sleep washed over his broad shoulders.

“…but that’s not to say that interpretation is not welcome in this debate. Far from it. In fact, in his excellent article in Wetland Birds Weekly, Professor Roy Whitely…”

Tom slumped further down the green benches and began to dream of large birds being pursued by huge eggs, which seemed to bounce over field and glen, chasing their prey with a terrifying single-mindedness. Could an egg be single-minded, thought Tom snorting and coming to for a minute. Not if it was a double-yolker, then it would have two minds he thought, triumphant even whilst half asleep at his victory over such a brain-teaser.

Gently lulled by the soothing voice of the Liberal Democrat, his head sunk further, words such as “feathered approach”, and “stiflingly narrow-minded” seeping into his subconscious and influencing his dreams.

A flat, green plain of leather grass stretched ahead of him as far as the eye could see. The landscape was dotted with what looked like dark boulders but, on closer inspection, turned out to be Members of Parliament. He could see the Member for one of the Birmingham constituencies gesticulating wildly, yet slowly as if his arms were moving through treacle rather than air.

“…eggs that are deadly to the birds that bear them,” continued a voice, as if from far away.

With horror Tom watched as an enormous egg appeared in front of him, bulging at its base as it landed. He cowered and tried to cover his eyes but suddenly it was off again, springing in the direction of the Birmingham MP! He tried to warn him, but it was too late; the MP had disappeared – consumed by the mighty egg that, even now, was heading back towards him.

“Madam Deputy Speaker, I say that they need to be saved!”

As if answering this mysterious summons that echoed around the plain, a flock of enormous birds – bright red with strong, spindly legs– appeared, zig-zagging towards him.

Without remembering how he got there, he was suddenly seated on the back of one of the huge birds, urging it to go faster. They seemed to fly across the countryside but they weren’t going fast enough because Tom knew that on the bird behind him sat Donald Sligo – Deputy Chief Whip – with whom he was in trouble again. He was gaining on them and they had to go faster, faster!

“…‘and no more turns his head, because he knows a fearful fiend doth close behind him tread.’ I beg the House’s forgiveness for this literary allusion, but…”

His bird’s feet fell evenly on the ground below, making a thump, thump, thump sound.

Thump, thump, thump.

“Bugger, what!” Tom sat up suddenly, poked awake by the MP sitting behind him.

“Gash, Gash!” the MP hissed urgently at him, and Tom realised that the thumping was not the creation of his dream because the entire Chamber was resonating with a series of dull thuds.

“Gash!” repeated the MP. “Isn’t that bloke one of your constituents?”

With a sinking feeling, Tom looked up to the Special Gallery.

Even though a glass security screen was preventing him from making as much noise as he would have liked, there was no disguising the purple, swelling head of Frank Lewes who was, even now, banging on the screen as hard as he could and yelling soundlessly at the Chamber below.

Tom Gash MP thought of the glassy stare that he would be treated to on Monday when the whips’ office found out about this, and wondered whether dreams weren’t prophetic after all.

***

Frank Lewes was not at all mollified at the explanations given for Tom’s sudden detour into the land of dreams but the MP, still thinking of the malevolent eye of the Deputy Chief Whip, was not really interested in persuading him otherwise. Mark was left to make apologies on his behalf, which he somehow managed by claiming that Tom had been working so hard keeping Mark up to speed with his correspondence that he had been left totally exhausted. So if you think about it, it was really his (Mark’s) fault, rather than Tom’s.

Tom Gash MP listened to this without thanks, his thoughts ping-ponging between a desire to strangle the secretary of his constituency Labour Party and the natural fear he had of the inevitable bollocking from the whips.

Eventually the tour group were loaded back onto the bus and dispatched in the direction of the south coast.

“Pint?” Tom asked his research assistant as the coach disappeared in the direction of Lambeth Bridge.

“Yeah.”

There was a silence for a moment as they contemplated the day’s events.

“Are you still going to stay in London on Fridays?” asked Mark eventually.

“Yes, absolutely,” said Tom with a forced cheeriness as he applied himself to his pint of Spitfire. "Why not, eh?"

“I'd give the idea up if I were you,” his bag-carrier advised him as he lit a much-needed cigarette. “The people are against you.”