Real life

If you’re Eric Pickles, please look away now. I think it only fair to warn the Secretary of State for local government, in case he happens to be reading this in a precious moment of relaxation, that I’m about to have another rant about the catastrophic events that unfolded after one of his advisors sent me a text message while I was riding my horse one Sunday afternoon. For those who don’t know the back story, this thrusting young spin doctor, probably thinking he was being really on his game in a retro-Alastair Campbell sort of way, attempted to monster me for a news story I had written which he took exception to. As his own office had briefed me the story, I took exception to this. Indeed, I became so cross that I rang him back and at the precise moment I did so my horse trod on an old rabbit bone which penetrated her foot and sliced into a crucial tendon. I cannot prove the two things are in any way connected, but I’ve decided, irrationally and hysterically, to blame Mr Pickles for my horse’s incapacitation.

No doubt because I am unable to face up to the random nature of life dealing me such a cruel blow by chance, I am taking comfort in artificially constructing some sort of meaningful structure to impose on the trauma in the shape of a good old-fashioned conspiracy theory.

Freddie Starr ate my hamster. Eric Pickles buggered up my horse. Again, for the record, I know he didn’t really, it just feels somehow more bearable to see it that way.

I’ve since received another text message from the advisor in question suggesting we let bygones be bygones. We should ‘agree to disagree’ about the whole incident, he suggests.