Wednesday 9 June 2010

Christmas Lunch, Officer Sexy & The Significance of Flowers

The morning's post brings more death-threat letters, addressed to The Boss in red ink. Meanwhile, he's being so annoying that I’d write some myself if I thought there was the remotest chance that he would read them. 


He phones first thing this morning, to tell us to keep Friday lunchtime free. 


"I've re-booked the restaurant for our work Christmas dinner,” he says. "Be there, or be square."


For God's sake. This is the dinner that was originally scheduled for the day before Christmas Eve - the same one that The Boss cancelled at the last minute after deciding that Greg and I had too much work to finish to be able to take two hours out for lunch. We did have too much work, but only because Andrew had just created it. 


Then, to add insult to injury, he said he'd pop into the restaurant while he was passing, and cancel the reservation in person. Two hours later, he phoned me to say that he’d met “two lovely ladies in the street,” and had asked them to join him for lunch, seeing as Greg and I couldn't make it. When he started to enthuse about what they were all eating, I hung up on him. 


Greg and I aren’t exactly in the mood for Christmas dinner in June, but Andrew hangs up on me when I tell him so. I decide to re-think my position on the red ink letters, and fax them through to Westminster, implying that I think they are far more serious than usual. 


I even contemplate forging one which suggests that the author knows The Boss’s home address, but chicken out at the last minute. I may have to hand them over to Special Branch at some point, and then I'd probably get the blame for sending all of them. If I’m still alive to hand anything over. 


In the afternoon, Officer Sexy arrives, but doesn't live up to his voice, which sounds a bit like Alan Rickman crossed with Barry White. He is clearly unimpressed with our non-existent security arrangements, writes a report recommending lots of changes, and says that, if The Boss doesn’t comply with them, the Police will have to think carefully about whether they can really be responsible for ensuring our safety. 


One of his suggestions is CCTV, and he looks incredulous when I tell him that The Boss considers this to be an invasion of constituents’ privacy. 


“This is Andrew Sinclair’s office?” he says. 


When I confirm that it is indeed, he says that he would never have thought that The Boss was camera-shy, given that he appears on local television at every opportunity. There is no denying or explaining this, of course, not without casting further doubt on The Boss’s sanity. 


In the evening, we run out of toilet roll - thanks to a bizarre papier mache experiment by Josh - so Max has to make an emergency run to Sainsburys. He brings a bunch of flowers home for me and, although he forgets to take the “reduced” sticker off, it’s the thought that counts. Isn’t it? A warm glow lasts for all of ten minutes, until I show Josh, who claims that husbands only buy their wives flowers when they are feeling guilty about something.


Talking of guilt, Johnny's still going on about why I haven't sent him a photo yet, so I decide that I'd better get on with. At least it may distract him from wanting to know whether I've found my diary yet, and I don't even want to think about that. I can't believe I used to be such an exhibitionist!


I choose a picture in which I am gurning furiously during a face-pulling contest I had with Josh and Connie over Christmas. (Max was far too dignified to participate - he won’t even play Charades on Boxing day in case any of us laugh at him.) 


My theory is that Johnny won't know whether I am genuinely hideously-disfigured or not, so his response should be interesting. I seem to be becoming far more “fun-loving” (ghastly phrase) since starting to correspond with him. Wonder if that attitude will survive the rest of the week.

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