Sunday
Strange call from Gary. Wanted to know if I knew anything about meatloaf. I said no, not my taste in music but that wasn’t what he was after. Said he’d rung every single girl in the press office and no one knew how to cook it, or what was in it, apart from meat. So I was to go and get Mummy. They were chatting for ages. She said: ‘Oh yes, it’s definitely the sort of thing one might cook for that occasion… beef … yes, organic beef if you prefer… yes of course you can have my mobile number and ring me if you get any awkward questions… ’ She won’t say what’s going on and has, annoyingly, taken to calling herself ‘senior adviser to David Cameron’s director of communications’. This is typical of Mummy, muscling in on my act. It’s just like the time she entered Wibberley working hunter trials on Mr Badger and totally overshadowed me and Sesame by falling head-first into the water jump.
Monday
Great balls of fire! Now all the to-ing and fro-ing over the weekend makes sense! I went to bed early and woke up to a world full of Big Beasts. What with Mr Clarke and Mr Pickles, it’s hard to know which Clampdown on Obesity press release to shred first! Nigel says there’s no time for that. We’re to get straight on with ‘Euro Ops’, just like we rehearsed in training. Terrific reaction in the press, of course. And Mummy’s meatloaf went down a treat! One thing puzzles me — why did Gary ring for the recipe on Sunday? Surely they would have needed it a day earlier if they were going to serve it for Saturday lunch. It hardly matters. When the history books are written they will record that Britain was saved when the shadow chancellor, entirely of his own accord, invited the Biggest Beast In Politics Ever round for lunch and persuaded him to come back to the front line and do most of his job for him. Hurray!
Tuesday
Think Mr Hague’s feeling a bit left out. He rang to ask if Gary wants his recipe for nettle soup ‘in case he’s doing another one of his currr-lever briefings! Hmmmm!’ Told him we would certainly put it on file. You can’t have enough recipes handy. As Nigel says, give the press a bit of detail about what someone was eating and they’ll believe anything! (Not that it isn’t totally credible that Gids might have invited Ken round to his house to offer him his job.) Anyway, we won’t be briefing anything else this week. Dave doesn’t want to steal Barack’s thunder. He’s sent out specific instructions — ‘no press releases till further notice, not even about our new bin tax proposals. This is Barack’s moment.’ So sweet.
Wednesday
Really excited about Ken. I’ve got a ton of things on my desk I can’t wait to run by him. It’s so amazing to be able to ask The Greatest Chancellor In Living Memory what to do. Only problem is he doesn’t seem to be answering his phone. Have called his office, am sure he will get back to me.
Thursday
Have now left 15 messages for Ken and nothing back. Not a dickie bird. Asked the lady in his office when he’d be available to look at some new spending figures and she said she hadn’t the faintest clue. I said I was sure he was very busy and she said: ‘No, he’s not. He just doesn’t want to talk to you.’ Ah well. There’s always Gids, I suppose.
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