A Case Of The Friday Wobbles, And A Great Idea To Help Small Businesses Comes To Nothing.

Ouf, I definitely shouldn't have eaten the Scotch egg that Max gave me because he was too riddled with guilt to eat it himself. I feel very odd indeed.

Mind you, I always feel a bit wobbly on Fridays - who wouldn't, with The Boss back from Westminster and constituency surgery to look forward to? God knows what that combination does to my blood pressure, but it can't be good.

It seems pathetic to be moaning about anything to do with life in Northwick in the light of the terrible events in Japan last night, though, doesn't it?

"We need to get our senses of proportion back," I say to Greg this morning, while we're walking into work - but he obviously isn't paying any attention to me. He's far too busy listening to the raised voices that are coming from our office.

"Have a nice time on Wednesday night, did you, Andrew?" says Vicky, in that sort of voice. (Her use of Andy seems to have bitten the dust.)

Greg puts his finger to his lips, and pulls me behind the coat-rack in the corridor. We stand very still and wait for what comes next.

"Um, no," says Andrew. "I don't know what you mean. I went to that do at the embassy, which was okay but a bit dull, so I left at 10:30pm and went back to the flat."

"So why didn't you answer either of your phones?" says Vicky. "I called you every half hour - almost all night."

I think this must have been a rhetorical question as, before The Boss can respond, Vicky comes hurtling out into the corridor, shouts, "Sod you!" and slams the door shut behind her. Then she grabs her coat and glares at Greg and me.

"Heard enough, you two?" she says.

"Yes, thanks," says Greg. "Safe to go in there now, is it?"

Vicky shrugs and walks off towards the stairwell, so Greg counts to fifty and then opens the door. Andrew's sitting at my desk, reading the local paper and chewing like mad. He tries to hide Greg's last bag of Haribos, but doesn't quite manage it in time.

"Morning, guys," he says, as if nothing at all has happened. "Looking forward to today? Lots more lovely constituents who hate the Coalition to sympathise with - can't be bad."

Honestly, only an MP would look forward to surgeries. Probably because they can get through the vast majority of the damned things purely by looking sympathetic and saying, "Ah," a lot. While muppets like me try to note down the garbled details of complicated cases, knowing that we're going to be the ones who have to do the follow-up work.

This scenario is a pretty accurate summary of what happens when we start seeing today's constituents straight after lunch. I show each person in, one at a time, while Andrew makes expansive gestures of welcome from the comfort of his chair. His legs are splayed and his tie askew, and I'm pretty sure there's a gravy stain on the bottom of it. No wonder he never makes GQ's Best-Dressed Man in Britain list.

Once the constituent is settled and starts to speak, The Boss then gives a virtuoso demonstration of sympathetic nodding - while I am left to frantically scribble down details of incomprehensible tax credit awards and overpayment demands; care home charges and a traveller family who apparently spend all their time re-spraying cars in the garden of their council house. It's a laugh a minute in this job.

Today, there's only one constituent in whom Andrew seems to take a genuine interest, and that's Jim Dixon - who is a self-employed carpet fitter working for most major retailers in the area. His business is going under, and he's just beginning to explain why, when Andrew jumps to a conclusion, as per bloody usual. That it's all the fault of the banks.

After listening to The Boss pontificating for what feels like hours about Stephen Hester's bonus and the banks' moral obligation to lend to small businesses, even the mild-mannered Jim looks as if he is going to explode. My head feels as if it already has.

"Andrew," I say. "Why don't you just let Mr Dixon tell us what his actual problem is?"

This earns me a grateful look from Jim, who goes on to describe the behaviour of the retailers who use his services. They're taking longer and longer to pay his invoices, and causing him major cash-flow problems in the process.

"How long are they making you wait?" asks Andrew, who has finally grasped what this is about. Or, at least, I hope he has.

"Our agreement is that payment is due within thirty days of the date of the invoice," says Jim. "And all the shops used to comply with that, at least most of the time. Until this last year. Then one of them wrote to me telling me that they weren't going to pay for ninety days, like it or not - and then all the others started pushing it as far as they could, as well. I've got bills that are still unpaid after nine or ten months."

"Bloody hell," says The Boss. Who may now be re-thinking his negative assessment of IPSA's turnaround of expenses payments. "I can see that would be problematic, to put it mildly."

"It is," says Jim. "Seeing as I still have to pay for everything up front. I can't exactly tell the filling station I'll pay for my petrol when my clients have paid me, can I? Or buy my family's food on tick?"

"No," says Andrew. "I suppose you can't. Bloody outrageous, that's what that is."

He sits and scratches his head for a moment, while looking optimistically at me. I'm starting to feel a bit sick - probably from that damned egg - so I just look straight back at him and concentrate on trying not to burp.

"We did something about this, though, didn't we, Molly?" says The Boss. "When we were in power, I mean."

"Well, sort-of," I say. "We legislated to allow small business people to apply charges for late payment if their bills weren't paid on time."

You'd swear that this had been Andrew's own idea, he looks so pleased to be reminded of it.

"Well, there you are, then, Jim," he says. "Problem solved. By your good old Labour government. Just slap a few charges on these bloody retailers and they'll soon -"

"Pay up, then tell me to bugger off and use someone else in future," says Jim. Which, not for the first time, seems to leave The Boss with nothing of any use to add to the debate. Or not before I have to excuse myself and head for the loo, anyway.

I have to repeat that particular journey so often over the course of the rest of the afternoon that eventually, Greg barges in to the Ladies' toilet to tell me that I might as well go home, for all the use I'm being. So now I have no idea if Andrew found a solution to Jim's problem, or not. The latter seems infinitely more likely than the former, based on past experience.

I suppose I'll find out on Monday morning, when I'll have to rely on Andrew's own notes to carry out whatever he suggested to Jim we would do - which is bound to be a total disaster, whatever it is. Which is a pretty good description of how I've spent my evening, too: on about two hundred more trips to the loo. (This poetry thing is awfully contagious.)

"You still throwing up, then, Mol?" says Max, at about 8:00pm, when he tries to open the bathroom door and finds it locked.

"Yes," I say. "Thanks to you, and that bloody Scotch egg of yours. Go away and leave me alone."

"I'd go to bed, if I were you," he says. "And take a bucket with you, too."

Huh. So it seems The Boss won't be the only one to have had an early night this week. Though I bet his was more fun than mine.

Bunions, HobNobs And Fatmobiles, Or How Vicky Discovers The Joy Of Helping Others.

God, there are riots and revolutions going on all over the place, but here at work, it's Groundhog Day. Or a parallel universe.

"There's an enormously fat man on a mobility scooter stuck in the corridor outside the lift," says Vicky, when she finally turns up at about 10:00am.

Greg and I look at each other, then both say,

"Mr Franklin."

"I don't know who he is," says Vicky, "but someone needs to go and rescue him. He's already knocked over the Weeping Fig."

"So why didn't you help him?" says Greg. "While you were in the vicinity, as it were?"

"He looked really grumpy," says Vicky. "And he was a bit smelly, too."

God knows why anyone who objects to either of those traits would want to work for an MP, but Vicky obviously doesn't see it as a reasonable hazard of the job. Which is how Greg and I find ourselves trying to manoeuvre a thirty-five-stone man and his fatmobile within a very confined space.

Not only is Mr Franklin no help whatsoever, but he also refuses to tell us how he managed to get through the security doors and into the lift without anyone noticing, and demands answers to questions about Coalition policies while we struggle to turn him around.

After he's covered bankers' bonuses and VAT, he starts on the NHS. It'll be the Ambulance Service next, probably when Greg and I have to be carted off by paramedics after collapsing with exhaustion.

"What are these reforms going to mean for my wife's foot operation?" he says. "I suppose they're bound to be an improvement, seeing as your lot did nothing to speed things up."

"Oh, I don't think that's true," says Greg, jerking the scooter rather viciously.

"Ow," I say, as Mr Franklin's shopping bag falls off the handlebar and lands on my foot.

"Watch out, you idiots!" says Mr F. "My HobNobs'll be nothing but crumbs by the time you two have finished."

Greg looks as if he can't think of anything he'd like better than to crush Mr Franklin's metaphorical HobNobs - if he could find them amidst all the extraneous flesh - so I have to step in before things get completely out of hand.

"Well, has your wife been back to see her GP, as I suggested?" I ask. "I did explain that she needed to tell him if her feet had got worse, because it's usually what's written in the GP's letter of referral that signals to the hospital how urgent a patient's case is."

"Saw the doc at the end of last week," says Mr Franklin. "He said he'd see what he can do - but he told me he's going to write to your boss, as well. He didn't look very happy, so he's probably going to give you a bollocking for doing bugger all to help."

"Um, I'm sure that's not true," I say. "Because we have done something. We wrote to the hospital about your wife's bunions ages ago, if you remember? And the Consultant's reply suggested that your wife see her GP again so that any changes to her condition could be assessed. Which was why I advised you to tell her that."

"Humph," says Mr Franklin. "All you lot do is pass the buck, isn't it? My Rose's feet are giving her gyp, and now her bloody cooking's suffering too."

Greg and I look at each other for a moment, but neither of us can think of a relevant response. Or not one's that's politically-correct, anyway - so Greg settles for crossing and uncrossing his eyes while grimacing instead.

"Was that everything you wanted to talk about, then, Mr F?" he says as, with a burst of energy born of sheer desperation, we finally manage to turn the scooter around so that it's facing the lift. He doesn't wait for Mr Franklin to answer before he says:

"Yes? Oh, good. Bye, bye, then."

He gives the back of Mr Franklin's seat a congratulatory slap while I press the button to summon the lift. Then we both leg it down the corridor as fast as we're capable of moving - which isn't very fast at all, as we're both completely knackered, and one of us is gasping for breath. I must give up bloody smoking.

We've almost made it to the end when the lift goes ping, and a plaintive sound assails us:

"Hang on, you two - what do I do when I get to the ground floor? You meeting me there in case I get stuck again?"

Greg turns round, and says,

"Oh, no - don't worry. There'll be a nice girl with long brown hair coming down in a minute. Just tell her we said that she'd been sent to help you. She's much stronger than she looks."

I raise my eyebrows, but Greg just taps his nose and winks. Then, as soon as we walk back into the office, he rushes over to his desk, and hides all of today's newspapers in the bottom drawer.

"Where the hell have the papers got to?" he says, rather louder than necessary.

Vicky and I both shrug, at which point Greg blames the disappearance on someone from the Party offices, and asks Vicky to go and buy some more.

"It's an emergency, so if you could do it straightaway, that'd be great," he says, as he puts a ten pound note into her hand. "A constituent said there was a big piece about Andrew in one of them, but I'm not sure which."

"Ooh, lovely," says Vicky, for whom the word gullible occasionally seems to have been created. "Maybe there'll even be a photograph!"

"Stranger things have happened," says Greg, as Vicky heads for the stairs and her date with destiny.

She doesn't come back for a very long time and, when she does, the look on her face suggests that this is yet another of Greg's good ideas that I'm going to regret going along with. Especially when she discovers that there isn't even a single quote from The Boss in any of today's editions.

How can she still not have realised that that's something to be very, very grateful for - unlike the opportunity to get up close and personal with a certain biscuit-loving constituent who's rather challenged on the personal hygiene front?

Who appears not to realise how lucky he is that he doesn't need to set himself on fire in order to make his voice heard. Unlike some poor buggers.