It is when one is jet-lagged and post-transatlantic-flighted and therefore
more than habitually the receiver of all the free-falling anxieties there are in the world that one most needs the reassurance of familiar things. Those little touches that tell you You're back home where you belong — nice, routine, British things like three final demands and cat sick on the mat and your frinds ringing up to throw their pent-up bad news at you like pennies into a fountain, and drop-out students knocking on the door at 11 pm to ask if you know about sauna baths on account of their firm, whose name eludes, paying them one Pound for every contraption I allow to be demonstrated in the privacy of my home and at my own convenience.
It takes at least a week, I understand (I lead a very sheltered life), to combat this kind of time-fatigue and the nameless, Monstrous panic that descends over my head like some Walt Disney cloud as I Windmill around in pursuit of sanguinity. Small comforts, meanwhile, have their compensation value. It was nice, for instance, to observe that on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order 1, Mr Robert Taylor Proposed to raise the subject of the result Of the blight notice served on No 1 Acacia Road, Norbury. Nice, I mean, to see that our rulers are still keeping themselves busy. And the amazingly pastoral John Wells (Con, Maidstone) might be enchanted to learn the inadvertent and much to, relished welcome to assuetude he bestowed upon me in the course, of the ding-dong (lightly disguished as a debate upon agriculture support prices and import duties he had with Charles Loughlin (Lab, Gloucestershire West).
It had not been the most erudite debate, what with the lateness of the hour, when manners turn to mannerisms and people like Peter Mills lay the foundation for all kinds of levity with such verbiage as "let us not weep for the butchers" and "there are eight reasons why the Government are right, as they always are ". When Man o' the People Loughlin rose, along with the big hand's indication of eleven o'clock, everyone turns into a pumpkin.
Mr Loughlin goes sawing away about the cost of living and "this miserable, incom petent lot" and who's a farmer and who's not a farmer and who is dishonestly protecting his own interests, while government bottoms fidget incontinently and coarse fellows shout "Get on with it" and similar compliments.
But John (country pursuits) Wells is most determined to shut him up. With his weight firmly on his brogues he demands Loughlin gives way. Will the hon gentleman give way? No he will not. The hon gentleman, accuses Mr Loughlin, has only just come out of the bar so he will jolly well not give way. So there.
On a point of order! cries the maligned and indignant Wells (appealing in his distress to Madam Deputy Speaker, who is about a hundred times less soft at being appealed to than Selwyn Lloyd) — the hon member is "telling lies ". The truth of the matter is that he's been sitting there right through the debate (for such he terms it).
Madam Deputy Speaker is quite sure, she says, playing an unusually placatory role, that the hon gentleman did not wish to say what he said. And she hopes, she pleads, that the hon gentleman will not continue to use the expression about any hon member in future.
But Loughlin is not to be assuaged. Having bitterly complained, at length, about the inadequacy of the time allotted to all the chat about butchers, he now demands that it is not in keeping with the tradition of the House when one hon member accuses another of lying for the Chair merely to say that the Chair hopes the hon gentleman will not pursue it, but to ask him to withdraw the expression. It would be better, he goes on (and on) with withdraw the remark because it 'is (of all things) unparliamentary.
"Order," cries our lady ringmaster. The hon gentleman is trying to withdraw the remark. But alas, her hopes are dashed. Mr Wells will withdraw the remark only if Mr Loughlin will acknowledge that he has been there all the time and has not just come in from the bar. Well then, yah boo sucks, he jolly well won't. Then, yah boo sucks neither will I, For the last time, Madam Deputy Speaker takes it upon herself to comfort Mr Loughlin with her opinion. Our hon gentleman really would wish to withdraw his remark, she says, or at the very least find another, more parliamentary word to replace the unparliamentary And this is the moment for John Wells, fifty-one years old, MP for twelve years, with Eton and Oxford under his hat, to betray the grandeur of his stature. He would withdraw, he says, if only he could think of another word. Indeed, he really wishes he could think of another word.
For the next fifteen minutes or so he is comparatively quiet. Ruminating, perhaps, upon the paucity of his voeabulary. And then the penny drops.
"The hon gentleman," he says, "is one of the best-known cheats in the House. He makes remarks of questionable veracity."
If that isn't a supreme example of British phlegm, as we know and love it, I don't know what is. Mr Loughlin, I need hardly add, stands on his dignity and ignores the repetition. But then, he hasn't been accused of just coming in from the bar.
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