Hello, Hello, It's Good To Be Back* - But Only If Your Name Is Gary Glitter.

Well, I wish I could say it's nice to be back, but it isn't. It's bloody horrible. Can someone please remind me why I work for an MP?

On second thoughts, don't bother. I probably wouldn't remember the answer for more than five seconds - seeing as I seem to have developed pre-senile dementia over the last fortnight. I can't believe I forgot it was Recess this week. 

"Oh, my God," I say, as I walk into the office this morning to find The Boss sitting with his feet propped up on my desk.

"Nice to see you too, Molly," he says. "How's your Dad?"

"Fantasising about the first thing he's going to do as soon as he gets back to Thailand and sees his beloved Porn-Poon," I say. "While unfortunately choosing to share that information with his daughters in rather more detail than is strictly necessary."

"And who can blame him?" says Andrew. "Any man would feel like that about seeing a hot young girlfriend - if he was lucky enough to have one."

I turn my head to look at Greg, who is clutching his throat and making retching motions, but not before I've spotted what I think is Andrew winking at Vicky. Honestly, how has it taken me all these years to work out who The Boss reminds me of? I might just as well be working for my father, the two of them are so alike.

Talking of Dad, it's a good job Dinah agreed to take over nursemaiding duties during half-term. At least I haven't got a murder charge to worry about on top of having to cope with The Boss being around all week. If she hadn't arrived when she did yesterday, I can't promise that today's Dorset Examiner wouldn't be carrying the headline, "MP's caseworker commits frenzied act of patricide."

Which would have been justifiable homicide, as far as I'm concerned, given that Dad had driven me to the verge of insanity by then. Let's just say that having a triple bypass didn't seem to have affected his ability to shout incessant orders for food and drink at full volume, or to complain that the resulting meal wasn't a patch on those prepared by Porn-Poon, which she no doubt usually serves on a bed of lettuce artfully arranged on her naked stomach.

Seeing as I was hardly going to emulate that, I was doomed to fail in the meal provision department despite putting handfuls of chillies and lime leaves into everything I cooked; and I didn't do any better when I disappointed Dad further by what he described as my typically-female lack of appreciation for Sky Sports.

It might not have been tactful to say that I'd prefer to be disinherited rather than ever to be made to watch another Rugby Sevens match, but I thought I was being cruel to be kind - on the basis that, if I annoyed Dad enough, he'd be pleased to see the back of me and wouldn't make a big fuss when the time came for me to leave. So much for best-laid plans.

Dad took one look at Dinah's kids, and started crossing himself while muttering about The Omen again. Then he refused to let me kiss him goodbye.

"Go ahead and abandon your old father, then, Molly," he said, turning his cheek away. "You rush back to your busy life, and your important job. God knows if you'll even find time to phone me this week. Not like my mate Charlie's son, who phones him every day. Every single day. But then he really loves his dad."

"That's because he's a Billy No Mates," said Dinah. "Who doesn't have any kids, or anything approaching what you'd call a life. Unlike some of us, who just have to juggle a load of balls as best we can."

I'd have been a lot more thankful for this undeniably accurate intervention, if Dinah hadn't then felt compelled to add:

"And, anyway, Molly's job isn't at all important."

Which is pretty much how I feel about it, too - once I've finished going through the supposedly-urgent messages that are waiting on my desk. Unless you count managing a bunch of lunatic constituents and a boss with an unerring instinct for saying the wrong thing as being of vital significance to the nation, that is.


*Hello, hello, it's good to be back - an unsubtle reference to Gary Glitter, which I blame on having spent the last fortnight listening to Dad going on about his Thai girlfriend.