A Rather Less Than Poetic, But Nevertheless Indisputable Display of Synchronicity.

God, being in love makes people annoying, doesn't it? Greg is really getting on my nerves.

"Jess says she can come away with me next week," he says. "She's managed to get the time off work - isn't that a stroke of luck?"

"I thought she was a poet," I say. "So I didn't think time off would be a problem."

"Yes, but don't forget she has massage clients too," says Greg.

I had forgotten that. No wonder he likes Jess so much.

Now he's got a very far-away look in his eye, so I decide to go and have a cigarette. There's only so much I can take of other people's sex-lives, without the need for nicotine.

I smoke as slowly as I can, and then stop off in the Labour Party office to chat to Joan, but Greg's still thinking about Jess by the time that I get back.

"It was synchronicity," he says. "Me meeting Jess, you know."

"Humph," I say.

No-one wants to be reminded of Sting when they're trying to avoid the thought of other people's sex lives.

"Don't you believe in synchronicity?" says Greg.

"No," I say - which proves to be a big mistake, but not one that becomes obvious immediately.

Things are unusually quiet for the rest of the morning, mainly because The Boss is still in London for this week's Friday sitting of the House. He doesn't get back here until just before the start of surgery - which quickly becomes quite demanding, despite the fact that all the usual suspects seem to be away on holiday.

I don't recognise any of the people who've booked appointments - for a change - but most of them want to talk about the Government's NHS and welfare reforms. At length, as you can imagine.

The Boss looks quite relieved when Miss Ventnor decides to buck the trend: she's got a thing about light pollution.

"City dwellers are being deprived of the pleasure to be had from seeing the stars," she says. To The Boss - she doesn't seem to have noticed me. Maybe she only sees properly in the dark.

"I agree," says Andrew. "It's a terrible shame. There's nothing like a starry sky."

He's looking pretty starry-eyed himself. Miss V isn't what you'd describe as unattractive.

She's also quite poetic, especially on the subject of wildlife and what birds and animals suffer as  result of becoming confused between day and night. Andrew's nodding his head so much in agreement that I'm sure I can hear his vertebrae cracking.

The mutual love-in takes so long that, by the time The Boss has agreed to join the campaign against light pollution and I have shown Miss Ventnor out - and ushered in Mrs Jackson to take her place - we're running even later than usual.

The Boss doesn't seem worried, though. Mrs J's even more attractive than her predecessor.

"I'm sure you didn't agree with Ken Clarke about sentencing, or degrees of rape, did you, Mr Sinclair?" she says.

"No, indeed I didn't," says Andrew, right on cue.

"Well, then," says Mrs J. "What are you going to do to protect the women of Northwick - and to stop the Council's plans to turn some of the street-lights off?"

"If you'll just excuse me," I say. "I have an urgent call to make. You'll be able to manage this without me, won't you, Andrew?"

I don't wait for an answer, as I pick up my notes and beat a retreat.

Andrew's still not talking to me by the time we leave the office this evening, but I don't care. Sometimes it's healthy for MPs to decide where they stand on issues all by themselves.

"That was a bit cruel of you, Mol," says Max, when I tell him about it. "You know Andrew always gets himself in a muddle with this sort of thing."

I'm about to defend myself, when there's an almighty crack from overhead, and the kitchen light goes out.

"Good God," I say. "What the hell was that?"

"The bloody lightbulb exploded again," says Max. "That's the third one that's done it in the last few weeks."

I start sweeping the glass up off the floor, but Max has just finished putting the food onto our plates, so he tells me to leave the mess until after we've eaten.

"Took me ages to cook this," he says, "so I don't want it to get cold. Eating's the priority, not clearing up."

I agree with him, until I take my first mouthful, and bite down on a shard of glass.

I may need to re-think my position on synchronicity. And on lighting.

Animal Magic & The Unseen Postcode Lottery: An Impression of a Mad Constituent.

Thank God today is fairly quiet. The usual stuff about dog poo, violence on television and rejected lovers wanting their exes reported for tax or benefit fraud. The highlight is Miss Emms, who writes in to say this:

Dear Mr Sinclair,
I am writing to you to complain about my irresponsible and inconsiderate neighbours, who live in the flat beneath mine. They are always smoking cannabis, and the smoke seeps into my flat and is causing serious problems. I have eight guinea pigs, and exposure to this drug is affecting them psychologically. I don't know where else to turn, as my Housing Officer doesn't seem to be taking any notice, and the RSPCA aren't interested either.
Can you please do something to help my poor, defenceless animals?
Yours hopefully,
Janice Emms (Miss)

Greg spends an inordinate amount of time trying to emulate a psychotic guinea pig, and then tries to persuade me to write back and ask Miss Emms for further details. I don't want to encourage the poor woman, but he says he has decided to re-train as a guinea pig whisperer if The Boss ever sacks him, or fails to get re-elected next time around. I hand him Miss Emms' letter and tell him to do whatever he thinks best.

Apart from that, there are quite a few calls about Nick Clegg's series of ill-advised comments at PMQs* yesterday, including one person who wants to get PMQs repeated, this time "with someone who is authorised to speak on behalf of the Government at the dispatch box." No-one is more pleased about the Deputy PM's cock-ups than The Boss, who prefaces every call he makes to us today with "I'm speaking in a personal capacity." This quickly ceases to be amusing, and eventually I give up bothering to even pretend to be laughing. Not that that ever bothers him. He's just like Dad.

In the afternoon, Jen phones. It's the first time I've spoken to her in weeks, as she's been busy winding up*  her MP's office, as he lost his seat at the General Election. She sounds pretty low, and says that when she went to sign on for the first time, she was confronted by one of her office's usual suspects as soon as she walked into the Jobcentre. He was working there - as a security guard, for God's sake. She says he was one of their most violent and unpredictable constituents.

Jen's MP was replaced by a young guy with no experience of anything much, and she's already absolutely sick to death of receiving letters from constituents whose cases she used to handle, saying that they wrote to their new MP months ago and haven't had anything other than a holding reply since. It turns out that he hasn't even interviewed any prospective staff for his constituency office yet, and so the casework has just been piling up since May. Some of the cases are really urgent too - with pressing deadlines - and Jen says she can't help wondering if constituents would have been half so keen to elect a fresh face if they'd realised that this might mean that they had no effective advocate for the next few months. Meanwhile, there's nothing she can to do to help the people who'd come to depend on her and her old boss.

This starts me thinking about what the public expect from their MPs. It seems to me that the quality and type of service that constituents get is far more varied than they probably realise. If you went to any other agency operating in the public sector, you could at least be fairly sure that they they were all required to aim to deliver a broadly similar service - but, in the case of MPs, there really is a postcode lottery in operation. I've dealt with loads of different constituency offices over the years, whenever I've had to hand over or take up a case of a constituent who has moved area, and I've met a large number of staff at training courses too. I'm always amazed by the wide variations, both in the calibre of MPs' staff, and in what their MPs expect of them.

Some MPs' offices still seem to be staffed by their spouses, or other family members, or even their election agents - regardless of whether any of them have the necessary skills and experience to be effective as caseworkers. Other MPs provide as many highly-qualified staff as their staffing budget will allow.

There are the MPs who don't even bother to have a constituency office, but instead expect their constituents to phone them long-distance whenever they wish to raise an issue. Others won't even stoop to having a residence in their constituencies. And then there are those "caseworkers" who aren't anything of the sort, but are instead activists, illicitly being paid by the unwitting taxpayer to do party political work under cover of a non-political job title.

Even when an MP agrees to take up a constituent's case, the variations continue. How hard your MP fights on your behalf isn't only down to whether your case is perceived as valid or bonkers, but is also affected by what each MP has decided is an appropriate level of service to provide to his or her constituents. For example, if you live in X, you'll receive a copy of any letter your MP has written on your behalf, so that you can check what has been said about you and your case, and correct any errors. If you live in Y, you'll just be told that your MP has "raised the matter on your behalf." You'll have no idea whether he summarised your case accurately, or whether he even indicated that it was urgent.

Then, when the reply eventually arrives from the ministerial department, or the relevant agency, it's often quite dismissive in the first instance. If you live in Y, you'll probably just get sent a copy with a compliment slip, and that'll be the end of your MP's caseworker's efforts on your behalf. If you live in X, though, your caseworker will have taken the time to study the details of your case at the outset, will have decided what is achievable and will immediately recognise an unsatisfactory response. He or she will continue to argue your case for as long as it takes to reach a successful outcome. I am one of the X types - not that you'd know it from my pay packet - and so is Greg, even though he can be such a f*ckwit. I am quite sure that our X status has something to do with The Boss' otherwise mysterious ability to keep bucking electoral predictions and getting re-elected.

As if all that inconsistency isn't quite bad enough, there is no set frequency for surgeries, no standard time for dealing with constituents' enquiries, and the chaos in some offices has to be seen to be believed. One MP's office manager told me recently - and with apparent pride - that her office deals with all correspondence in "strict date order." She seemed to think this was praiseworthy in its egalitarian idealism, and had no idea how to respond when I asked her how on earth this affected constituents whose problems were urgent or subject to deadlines. God knows how often the worst is already happening to some constituents while she and her staff are still sorting out dog poo and psychologically-damaged guinea pigs for the others. I have a recurring vision of letters bearing the HOC* crest dropping onto the doormats of empty houses whose occupants have been deported, evicted or murdered by their dangerous spouses, all because of smug dingbats like her.

I rant about this for so long this afternoon that first Greg says that I have officially turned into a mad constituent, and then he suggests that I contact Working For An MP to suggest that they employ me to tour the country training all the new MPs and their staff. He's joking, but I think it's a pretty good idea - especially if I could go on tour during Recess.

I am so distracted by this very attractive notion that, before I know it, it's time to go home - before I've even replied to Johnny's latest email, which offers a virtual massage amongst other equally-pleasant suggestions. Having just woken up from a drool-inducing snooze on the sofa, I plan to watch Question Time, and then to take him up on his offer - if Max doesn't offer a real-world alternative, of course.

*PMQs - Prime Minister's Questions, as usual - except that this one was taken by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick "Calamity" Clegg.
*HOC - House of Commons, also as usual.
*Winding Up - Period allowed for the business of closing down an MP's office after he or she has failed to be returned at a General Election.

Disturbing Resemblances, Yachting Directors of Global Oil Companies, and Uncharacteristic Empathy.

God, why do I look so different in photographs to how I imagine I look? The Boss' website is being updated, to allow him to blog - asking for trouble - and I have to have a new photo taken. The result makes me look like Mr Burns in The Simpsons. When did I become a hunchback? Charles Laughton had nothing on me. I blame it on the weird position I have to adopt while talking on the phone to Miss Chambers and trying to preserve an ear-protecting distance from the receiver. Last night's misguided attempt at pole-dancing didn't help my posture much either, but what's a girl to do when her husband and son spend five hours in a lap dancing club on Father's Day? (Max claims they only went to the pub and that Josh is winding me up, but he looks suspiciously cheerful this morning.)

My photo could be worse, though - Greg looks exactly like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho in his, which may well be scarily accurate. He says he thinks he looks "damned attractive" and will scare off lunatics, so I can't persuade him to change it, but I'm not letting mine go anywhere except into the virtual trash. Am going to suggest the web designer uses the EMO-style photo that I sent to Johnny Hunter instead. The constituents probably won't notice that I have my eyes shut, or will think I'm wincing with empathy for their plights.

Actually, I am feeling rather uncharacteristically empathetic today. Anti-Social Behaviour is the order of most of the day's telephone calls. Such an idiotic term, which doesn't at all reflect the utter misery that is wreaked on so many by so few. If there's one thing I blame the Labour Government for, it was their complete inability to call a spade a spade. ASB sounds like a toddler tantrum, which drastically understates the case if our constituents are anything to go by. Whole estates terrorised and, even if we eventually get a result for distraught residents by getting a nightmare family evicted, it's only a matter of time until their new neighbours contact us, equally desperate.

Whenever the subject comes up at at dinner parties - which is pretty rare anyway - our friends look at me as if I'm making up examples for the sake of entertainment. East Northwick might as well be A Tale of Two Cities, for all the awareness of the underclass that those who live in its richer parishes have. When I mentioned the horse and the burnt-out cars in the front garden of Steve Ellington's place, David said, "Oh Molly, you are funny." He should have seen Edmund Beales' bloody Doberman. Bet there were three pit-bulls inside that house as well - Greg and I escaped by the skin of our teeth. I didn't even recall Mr Beales' shotgun licence until afterwards, so I suppose things could have been a whole lot worse.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, which is what empathy does to the brain. You can't afford too much of it in my job but, getting back to ASB, there seems to be no meaningful deterrent at all. If the nightmare neighbours have children, they'll be re-housed straightaway even if they are evicted - to protect their children. What's even more depressing is how so many of the Council's Housing Officers seem to take the view that the desperate, reasonable residents are simply "moaning minnies." I'd find this rather less irritating if almost everyone who worked in the Housing Department didn't live miles away in rural bliss, as evidenced by their complete inability to get to work at the first hint of snow.

Greg is still determined that we finish what we started with our DIY CRB checks, despite the Beales Dog Debacle. I have agreed to think about it, mainly because the new door is the only security improvement The Boss has approved. This is a bit rich, when you consider that even his favourite drinking den in Millbank has better security than we do. Last time I went to meet him there - ostensibly to participate in interviewing Carlotta LongLegs - I was overcome by claustrophobia when I had to step inside one of those glass tube things, which seemed a horribly snug fit. Then I freaked out because I thought it was never going to open again. Considering how tiny I am, God knows how they vet any fat terror suspects. I'm probably not allowed to say "fat" either.

Just before I leave work for the day, Johnny sends me another email asking if I'm not talking to him. He's apparently been back in the UK for the weekend, on a yachting trip, and says it's a shame I didn't reply to his last message as we could have arranged to meet up. I obviously should have paid more attention to those reports about Tony Hayward on his yacht. (What kind of man calls his yacht Bob, for Godsake?) Maybe I'd have spotted a Putin lookalike hauling the mainstay, or whatever you do on a yacht - apart from falling mysteriously over the side when a pensions scandal threatens, of course. Obviously Johnny's earlier email suggesting a massage was directed at me. I'd tell him where to get off, if I didn't really need a massage to alleviate the pain in my neck caused by trying to spin round the spare curtain pole last night.