DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY
MONDAY
I do want to believe there’s more to life than money but it does seem a bit — well — impractical. Mummy is furious. Says if Dave would care to pay our vet’s bills for the two months Sesame has been malingering with horsey colic, then she will happily admit that money isn’t everything. In the meantime, if it’s OK with Dave, we’ll just go on working our fingers to the bone for hard cash. ‘It’s all right for them,’ she rants. ‘If their horses get sick, I expect they just sell another painting.’ Daddy says we are going to have to tighten our belts. Before I know what’s happening they’ve identified me as the biggest drain on their resources and made me promise to demand a pay rise. This can’t be what Dave meant.
TUESDAY Anonymous hate mail postmarked Bromley piling up in office, all about what to do about the by-election. It took four of us to open and file it all in the special cupboard marked DSD or ‘Don’t Show Dave’ (the same one where we put all the Chocolate Oranges people send us. We’re not meant to keep them — but let’s face it, they’re yummy!). The letters are shocking: ‘We don’t want their kind here’; ‘Send them back to W10!’; ‘No A-listers in our back yard!’ Nigel thinks it could get ugly. People may have to start fleeing persecution.
WEDNESDAY We’re told to come up with ways to further the Happiness agenda. This strikes me as a good moment to tackle Nigel about my pay rise. He laughs a lot then says ‘no’. I ask if I can scale down my hours instead, for my GWB. He looks blank, then says, ‘What, the trade union?’ I can’t believe I’m having to explain policy to him. ‘General Wellbeing? Hello! It was in Dave’s speech.’ He offers to scale down my hours to zero. He’s just stressed because his howies catalogue hasn’t arrived.
THURSDAY
Big rows in Mr Maude’s office again. This time he’s arguing with Dave who for some reason is now furious about the A-list. Poppy says he is having a ‘Lou and Andy’ moment. (I know this means Little England). Can’t do the full routine, but suffice to say Dave is in the wheelchair and Mr Maude is pushing him about saying: ‘Are you sure you want lots of gay people with a background in light entertainment?’ Apparently, Dave said ‘yes’, right until the moment the A-list leaked out and the press started making fun of it, when suddenly he went berserk, said he didn’t like it, and demanded more right-wing Eurosceptics.
FRIDAY
Oh dear. Our great plan to offer up Howard Flight in Bromley is not working. The association is claiming he has a glassy look in his eyes and has been ‘got to by the mincing metrosexuals’. Apparently a Mercedes dealer from Chislehurst asked, ‘How do we know it’s really Howard?’ Now I can’t stop thinking about that film The Body Snatchers. I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight.
tamzin.lightwater@spectator.co.uk
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