MONDAY
Have learnt important lesson: Never meet your heroes, or, in the case of former prime ministers from Brixton, don’t even speak to them on phone. Had to call for quote on Lottery proposals. Norma answered. Lot of sighing. Then clunking as phone dropped and long silence before a voice said, ‘Sir John Major KG here, hello, yes.’ I explained that I just needed two sentences. He said, ‘This will necessarily take a not inconsiderable period to organise. In my judgment, you should remain at the end of the telephone during what I hope will be a reasonably brief interlude.’ Cue muffled sound of things being dropped, paper crackling, pens that didn’t work furiously scratching on notepads. Then he read out a statement which involved words I’ve never even heard of before, like ‘gradgrind’ and ‘rumpus’.
Couldn’t tell him it was not inconsiderably useless, so I said thank you very much. ‘Not at all. I have been to a great extent preoccupied by this matter and its consequences for quite some period of time now, indeed it was the late Colin Cowdrey who….’
TUESDAY
An invite to Dave and Sam’s summer barbecue in Kensington tonight! Poppy says someone pulled out and they need a girl to make up the numbers. She’s just jealous because it’s me they come to when they need spare totty. What an honour! Big wardrobe dilemma: invite says ‘relaxed informal’. Mummy says that means cocktail dress.
WEDNESDAY
A night of confusion and horror. Everyone in jeans and skinny t-shirts with clever slogans. A lot of mwah-mwahing mixed with ‘Awight darlin’?’ My accent was all over the place. So tongue-tied when introduced to Sam I started blathering about how much I love her handbags. Fag hanging from mouth, humming a very old song by Wham! (I think), she opened a cupboard door and about 15 of the things fell out. She chucked one at me and said, ‘Real croc. £1,000 to you, sweetheart, seeing as you’re a mate of Dave’s, kna’ah mean!’ What could I do? I had to get my chequebook out.
Then she and her girlfriends disappeared into kitchen and started talking about ‘like, social cohesion’. Lurked at back as they all sipped champagne and nibbled bruschetta and complained about shrinking community networks, people not feeling at home in their own streets, etc.
THURSDAY
Strangest thing: get a briefing paper today about neighbourhood cohesion which is word for word what the It crowd were talking about at the party. Nigel says, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? Sam is the seventh policy commission. She and her friends churn out ideas faster than the entire front bench. A plate of organic chorizo slices and they’re away. They’re cheap as chips to run.’ Have decided this policy-making is a piece of cake. Reckon even I could do it. In fact, next week, while it’s quiet, I’m going to try….
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