Multiculturalism In Action: Coming To A Car Park Near You.

God, what a day. Who'd have thought a car boot sale could turn out to be so hazardous? I could kill Max for suggesting it, though he blames me. No change there, then.

"If you hadn't got so drunk on Friday, and given yourself a two-day hangover, we wouldn't have to do a car boot to get the money to buy you Paracetamol," he says.

"Well, if Josh hadn't refused to go back to Ellen's to borrow some more, it wouldn't be an issue," I say. "I don't know why she only gave him two tablets when he asked her yesterday. She should understand a hangover better than anyone, after all."

Max rolls his eyes, as if I have no reason to dislike Ellen. Honestly - talk about a short memory!

"I'll go and ask her, then," he says, but I'm not encouraging that. The less Max sees of Ellen the better, as far as I'm concerned. Even when she is wearing clothes.

"Josh, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you went back for more," I say. "Go and ask her. Please. I can't face a car boot at this time in the morning."

"No, I won't," says Josh. "I am not your drugs mule, and Ellen scares the pants off me. She's got a thing for toy-boys, remember? And I meet the criteria, unlike some people."

Josh looks pointedly at Max, who scowls in response and then sulks until we've finished loading the car with all the rubbish we could find during a hasty search of the loft last night.

His mood doesn't improve when we arrive at Northwick Park'n'Ride, and realise that we haven't got enough money to pay for the pitch. I have to negotiate with the man at the gate to let us in, and to come and collect our fee in an hour's time.

"Christ knows if we'll have managed to raise £7:00 by then," says Max. "Or ever, given the crap we've brought - and all the stalls that are already here. Too much competition for limited customers, by the look of it."

"Well, we'd better unpack as fast as we can, then, hadn't we?" I say. "As soon as we get set up, you can go into super salesman mode, make some money and I can finally get rid of this bloody headache."

Things never go according to plan, though - do they? The minute we open the boot of the car, four or five Eastern European guys appear from nowhere, and start rummaging through the boxes. It's like a swarm of black leather jackets and jeans worn with proper shoes.

"What are you looking for?" Max asks the apparent leader of the pack, in a weak attempt to regain control of the situation.

"Mobile phones?" says the man. "You got mobiles in here?"

As soon as I say that we don't, the men disappear - as quickly as they arrived. In fact, it's almost as if they were never there at all and, for one very disconcerting moment, I wonder if I imagined them. Maybe I've got alcohol-induced hallucinations, or something?

"For God's sake, Mol. Stop standing there and help me with this," says Max. "You look like a Guppy with your mouth open like that."

I rise above the insult and do as I'm told, but only because I can't think of a cutting rejoinder. And because I don't have a choice - though I bet a certain International Director of a Global Oil Company isn't spending his Sunday morning wrestling with a folding table and a mound of boxes in a car park.

As soon as we've got the table set up and we begin to unpack, we start arguing again. Why don't men appreciate the importance of arranging things to their best possible advantage? That's probably why they can't see the point in make-up, now I come to think of it.

"Do you have to just chuck everything on the table willy-nilly?" I say. "I'm trying to make our stock look attractive."

"It's a car boot, Molly," says Max. "At 6:00am on a Sunday morning in a car park. So I don't think window dressing is really necessary."

I decide to prove him wrong by virtue of a controlled experiment - which involves an artistic arrangement of the things on the left-hand side of the table while leaving those on the right-hand side in a total mess, to see which of us is right; but my scientific approach is ruined by the inconvenient arrival of some more customers. Honestly, why can't people ever put things back where they found them?

Now I know how the staff in Benetton used to feel when I kept unfolding jumpers and then making a crappy job of folding them back up again - back in the days when all my clothes didn't come from Primark. Not that folding's much of an issue there, is it? Maybe customers chucking everything on the floor is just a reflection of their bargain hunting mentality.

I really must get this telekinesis thing under control. No sooner have I begun thinking about bargain hunters, than our stall is suddenly surrounded by a large group of dark-haired men, again all wearing jeans but this time with trainers on their feet. They're pulling suitcases with wheels on, and their burka-clad wives follow behind, watching closely as the men pick up various items and ask us, "How much for this?"

"A pound," says Max, as one of them inspects a brand new wireless router we bought by mistake on eBay last year.

"No, no, no," says the man. "Too much. I give you ten pence."

He throws a coin onto the table and makes as if to move away, though he's still holding the router.

Max starts to say something, when he's interrupted by a booming voice from very close by. It's the guy manning the stall next door to ours.

"Tell 'em to fuck right off," he says. "Bloody load of f*cking vultures."

"Too right, George," says another man, in a horribly-familar voice. "Don't know who these people think they are. Coming over here and trying to rip off hard-working Brits like us."

Oh, dear God, what the hell is going on? And how on earth have we been caught up in a potential race riot? Max and I look at each other and squirm, but luckily everyone's forgotten about us anyway.

Our customer abandons the router as he and his friends leave our stall and head next door, where they square up to the stall-holder and his partner-in-crime. Who, incredibly, turns out to be Reg Bloody Beales. Is nowhere safe?

There follows a lot of pushing and shouting, while I take the opportunity to open the car door and to throw myself face down onto the back seat.

"What on earth d'you think you're doing?" says Max. "You can't go to sleep now. I'm not dealing with this mob by myself, even if you have still got a bloody hangover."

"Ssh," I say. "Mad constituent. Got to hide."

I'll say this for Max, he doesn't ask for details during an emergency. Instead, he walks back to the stall and carries on without me, while I lie very still and try to become invisible. I may have dozed off for a while, actually, as I nearly jump out of my skin when Max knocks on the window.

"You can come out now," he says. "They've all gone, and even the stall-holder's packed up and is about to leave."

"Oh, thank God for that," I say. "I thought there was going to be a fight. It certainly sounded like it."

"There was," says Max. "But after the guy with the blue suitcase landed the first punch, his mates pulled him away and the bloke that you know did a runner. Well, not a runner, exactly: am I imagining it, or did he ride off on a horse?"

Oh God, so Reg has replaced his lorry with a horse and cart, though I'm not sure the roads will be any safer for that. Or any public spaces, actually. And why can't I ever escape the usual suspects - even on a Sunday - no matter where I go?

Mind you, things could be worse, I suppose. I could be a diplomat. It's been like the United Nations here in Northwick Park'n'Ride today, and no-one seems to understand each other at all. Not even me and Max.

"How much money have you taken?" I say. "Can we go home yet?"

"Enough to pay for the pitch and some painkillers," he says. "As well as food for the next couple of days. So we won't starve just yet, no thanks to you."

I feel suitably guilty until Max drops me off at Sainsburys to buy some Paracetamol, but then I'm still so puzzled by how we ran out of money so quickly, that I get a mini-statement from the cash machine. Now I wish I hadn't.

It shows that the last person to make a withdrawal from the account was not me - the unjustly accused - but Max. At a petrol station somewhere miles away; and on Friday night, while I was at the Party social and I thought he was at home.

It's going to take all my diplomatic skills to avoid mentioning it until I've had some time to assess the situation. At which point I bet Max will wish that he was the one who travelled by horse. At least they don't leave a paper trail.

Turn On, Tune In, And Cop Out. (I Wish.)

Lightbulb moments are vastly over-rated. I've just had two of them and neither was enjoyable.

In the morning, Mr X phones to complain about his new council flat. Or, more specifically, about the lack of light bulbs in his new council flat. (I'm calling him Mr X because I'm too scared to risk naming him.)

Let's just say the conversation does not go well. My attempts to explain that he is expected to provide and fit his own light bulbs is interpreted as a combination of racism and discrimination; and then Mr X says that this is how he's been being treated ever since he arrived in the UK. From a previously war-torn part of Eastern Europe, which I'm also not willing to name.

Mr X is very het-up and becoming increasingly difficult to understand, so my asking him to repeat every other sentence really doesn't help. Eventually, he loses patience and starts yelling at me. Luckily the pitch isn't as ear-shattering as that which Miss Chambers can achieve, but what he says is much more worrying.

He's threatening to bomb the local housing office if he is not provided with light bulbs by the end of the day. I'd ignore it if he was one of the usual suspects, as they wouldn't have the faintest idea how to build a bomb - but Mr X seems an altogether different kettle of fish.

The detail he gives - not to mention the organisation of which he claims to be a member - makes his threat sound alarmingly credible, so now I am faced with a dilemma.

"Greg," I say. "I think I'm going to have to breach confidentiality again."

After I've explained why, Greg goes off on a rant about how refugees from war zones should be made to undergo counselling as part of the asylum process, so that they realise that they don't have to operate in the same way as may have become necessary in their homeland.

"Yeah, well - not helpful at this point," I say. "I don't think I'm likely to get Mr X any psychological help by this afternoon. I'll have to phone The Boss and get his permission to share the information instead."

"Huh. Good luck with that," says Greg. "Don't you remember what he was like about Mr Humphries? You got a right bollocking - just for giving a statement to the Police."

"Well, this time more people's lives might be on the line if I do nothing. So I haven't got any choice, have I?"

Honestly, imagine how cool it must be to have the sort of job where the biggest emergency you face is a collapsing bedstead. Not mentioning anyone's job in particular.

I pick up the phone and dial Andrew's number. There's no answer, so then I try his mobile - which goes straight to answer-phone. Brilliant. Mr X is probably assembling his bomb right this minute, while lots of unsuspecting housing officers sit calmly typing and drinking fruit tea.

I call Marie-Louise, who tells me that Andrew is in back-to-back meetings for the rest of the day, and has left his pager in the office. For God's sake - I give up. There's nothing for it but to make an executive decision, so I ring the Council and speak to the Head of Housing Services. Off the record, though I never really trust that anyone will honour that particular phrase.

After all that, it turns out that I needn't have worried. Or risked a bollocking. Apparently, Mr X phoned the Council and made the same threats, before he even called me. So the Police have been notified already, and the Housing Office is in the process of being evacuated.

All that's left for me to do is to try to extract a promise that someone from either the Police or the Council will let me know the outcome, but I don't have much faith that this will actually happen. Nor does Greg.

"They always bloody well forget about us," he says. "So I'm not leaving anything to chance."

He spends ages building a barricade in front of the door in case Mr X escapes the clutches of the Police and comes here to take his revenge. Joan knocks it down five minutes later when she comes in to ask for an up-to-date photo of The Boss for a newsletter. She says she didn't even notice it was there.

We're all so jumpy by now that no-one wants to answer the phone, in case it's Mr X again, so we decide to do it on a rota basis. Greg says he'll go first, Vicky's to go next,  and then it'll be my turn. And so on for the rest of the day - or that's the theory, anyway.

After Greg takes the first call - from Steve Ellington - the phone rings again.

"Your turn, Vicky," I say.

She shakes her head, and stray hairs go flying everywhere as usual.

"Count me out," she says. "I'm only a volunteer."

So it's my turn again. This time the caller's a lovely old lady called Mrs Worthington, who sounds very frail, but is scrupulously polite.

"So sorry to bother you, dear," she says. "But I don't know where else to turn."

"Don't worry about that," I say. "How can we help?"

"It's the lightbulbs in my flat."

For one insane moment, I imagine that Mr X has kidnapped Mrs Worthington and is holding her hostage until he is given a stock of lightbulbs, but then all becomes clear.

Mrs W tells me that she was widowed last year, very shortly after she and her late husband had exchanged their council house in the South East for a smaller one in Northwick - which has much higher ceilings.

As if the stress of bereavement and moving wasn't bad enough, she recently had a fall and is now barely able to walk, let alone climb on to a stool or use a ladder to reach the light-fittings.

"The last bulb went yesterday," she says. "And I don't know any of my neighbours, so I don't feel I can ask them for help. I don't like to bother people, and Fred and I were never blessed with any children."

"When you say 'the last bulb' - which room is it that has no lighting?" I say. Cooking by candlelight might be a bit hazardous, to say the least.

"Oh, all of them now, dear," she says. "That's why I had to phone you. I couldn't think who else to contact."

How desperately sad is that? When I finally get home - after checking behind me all the way to make sure Mr X isn't lurking in the shadows - I make a cup of tea, sit down and contemplate the height of our ceilings.

Then I climb onto a chair and try to reach the light fitting. It's miles away, so I try standing on the table, but I still can't reach the damned thing. Josh walks in and looks at me.

"What the hell are you doing, Mum?" he says.

"Trying to change a light bulb," I say. "By myself."

"You've got no chance of managing that. You're far too short. And anyway, this bulb's still working."

"That's not the point," I say. "I'm assessing the situation."

"Hopeless," is Josh's cruel verdict.

If he ever moves out, and then Max leaves me for James Bloody Blunt, I'll never see artificial light again.

The Winter Of Discontent Arrives Earlier Than Expected.

The first thing Greg says to me this morning is,

"What on earth's the matter with your face?"

After seeing my expression, it's also the last thing he says to me, until lunchtime when The Boss phones with some news: Marie-Louise has gone off sick.

"So, you'll just have to do my London diary until I can get someone in," he says.

"Why can't Carlotta do the diary?" I ask. "She's in London. That does help, you know."

"She's too busy," says The Boss.

I seriously doubt that. I'm pretty sure Carlotta still takes a siesta every day - something to do with her cultural heritage. But I let it go, as I'm more concerned to find out what's wrong with Marie-Louise. She sounded fine when I spoke to her earlier, but Andrew side-steps the question when I ask him.

"She's probably got personal problems," he says," and anyway, it shouldn't take long to find a replacement. I have a plan."

I really don't like the sound of this. Andrew's plans have a nasty habit of resulting in him shooting himself firmly in both feet. Or in my feet, actually, as one of my unwritten contractual duties is to put myself in the line of fire. Also, he sounds alarmingly smug, so it's obvious he's up to something. But what?

I decide to ring Carlotta and find out what has really happened.

"Ah, the poor girl has just had enough," says Carlotta. "Andrew has been horrible today. Marie was in tears by 10:30am and locked herself in the loo for ages. When she finally came back in to the office, he told her not to be a baby, and then - the very next minute - she said she didn't feel well and was going home."

"Christ," I say. "Sounds as if it must've been bad."

"It could have been even worse," says Carlotta. "When she got home, she sent me an email saying she was going to resign."

"Oh, my God! Why didn't The Boss tell me that?"

My squeak alerts Greg, who decides it's worth risking approaching my desk to find out what's going on, so I share the receiver between us. Hope he thinks the blotches are catching.

"Andrew doesn't know," says Carlotta. "I talked Marie out of it, with stories of what the coalition's going to do to the unemployment figures in the next few months. So now she is just off sick - which still leaves the problem of his diary."

"Bloody hell," says Greg. "I can't understand it. He was miles better on Friday so I thought things were looking up. In fact, he was as happy as Larry all week, especially at conference."

"Pfft," says Carlotta. "Today he is determined to upset everyone. Even though he shouldn't even be here, seeing as it's still Recess. He started to dictate some rubbish to me before I'd managed to take my coat off this morning, then said I was a 'bloody amateur' when I asked him to wait a minute."

"Did he ask you to do the diary, then?" I say.

"Yes," says Carlotta. "I told him: Andrew, if you want me to do that, then you have to write all the articles you promised those people at the fringe meetings yourself. Solo. Then he changed his mind. Sorry, Molly."

Sorry, my arse. Bloody, bloody hell. I wonder if Carlotta's going to get to keep the fees for these articles, like she did with the last one she wrote? I bet she is. The Boss doesn't care about money half as much as he cares about publicity - except when it comes to my salary, of course.

He won't be intending to pay me extra for doing his diary, or approve any overtime. He'll just say I need to "buckle down" and remind me of the clause in my contract that covers "any other reasonable duties." That's all well and good, but I do wish IPSA wouldn't leave it to The Boss to define reasonable. It's not a concept that he's overly familiar with.

So it seems I am doomed to become progressively more undervalued by the minute, given the unpaid hours I'm going to end up putting in until Marie-Louise comes back. I am tempted to write to Derek Simpson and ask him what he's going to do about it. I bet he'll say he's far too busy planning mass strikes, and leaning on Ed Miliband to bother with the likes of me.

I really must cancel my union membership, especially now I know what Derek earns - and about his alleged penchant for Thailand. Maybe I could get Dad to put a word in for me, if he should run into Derek during his next visit? Or maybe Porn-Poon could exercise her charms on my behalf? Though, actually, I'd prefer not to think about her charms and their effects.

Carlotta faxes me through all the urgent diary stuff, and forwards me the diary-related emails. She says she'll send everything else in the post. This does not improve my mood. In fact, I am so cross that I spend five minutes cursing and kicking the filing cabinet. Then I have to spend another fifteen minutes trying to get the bottom drawer to open.

Greg starts laughing, so I try to wither him with a look. It doesn't work, even though my face resembles the Infected more than usual.

"Trying to add repairwoman to your job description too?" he says.

"Shut up, Greg - it's not funny. I haven't got time for this! Not with all the bloody diary stuff to do."

"Cheer up, Mol," says Greg. "Think of all the fun you can have, sending The Boss to the wrong locations."

Huh. I wish I could send the usual suspects to the wrong locations. To far-flung destinations, and with one-way tickets. Maybe Derek could take them with him, next time he goes? Miss Chambers rings just before we close, to complain that the man who owns the local Post Office won't serve her.

"Why not?"

"Because he didn't like me calling him a Paki," she says. Or screams, to be more accurate. "Do something about it. I don't know what this country's coming to."

"Nor do I," I say, though I have a horrible feeling that she is oblivious to sarcasm.

Now I come to think of it, I can't see what Marie-Louise has to complain about. Being a Diary Secretary would be a doddle, compared to casework. Imagine only having to deal with the logistics of room bookings, travel and acceptance letters! And I wouldn't have to deal with Miss Chambers any more. But, of course, I shall do as I'm told, as usual. How I envy that Post Office man his self-respect.