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.

Joshua "Irma Kurtz" Bennett Comes to the Rescue.

Max leaves to drive to the airport before I go to work. He makes a great show of checking that I have the itinerary and know that he has written the name of his hotel in the diary. I grunt, but then panic. What if his plane crashed, and the very last thing I'd said to him was "humph"? This is how he and the kids get away with so much, as I'm sure they all know that I am insanely convinced that, should any of us part on an argument, that'll be the last time we ever see each other. I may well qualify as a mad constituent myself.

So I give Max a kiss, which he turns into a proper one. This is extremely weird, and very disturbing - because if there's one thing married people don't do, it's kiss as if they were in love. Even if they do still have a sex-life. It's oddly easier to shag someone whilst resenting them at the same time, than it is to kiss them with any degree of conviction. Maybe that's why prostitutes don't kiss their clients.

I am miserable all day at work, and also very grumpy. Then bloody Nadhim Sahawi* draws more attention to the Somali family's million pound house during PMQs, which really doesn't help, as this sets all the usual suspects off on a series of virtually-identical rants. I have no idea how to defend a system that allows this sort of thing to happen, and by the time I've managed to get Mr Beales off the phone, my mood is even worse. This means that I actually walk off before Joan has finished telling me about the latest fiasco with her Tax Credit overpayment. I have never been so rude to anyone before, but I do wish she wouldn't lie in wait for me in the ladies' loo. Drives me mad,  and is enough to give me Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Thinking about IBS reminds me that I have to arrange for another intern to replace the one who ran away in fear of his life. The list The Boss gave me seems to consist purely of sixteen-year-old schoolgirls, one of whom is the daughter of the local Tory Party chairman. Does Andrew not realise this? I phone to enquire.

"Um, Andrew - this Fiona girl you've got on the interns list - "

"Lovely girl," says The Boss. "Pretty as a picture."

"Well, that's all very nice, but are you aware that she's George Thompson's daughter?"

"Oh. That." The Boss doesn't sound concerned. "The local Tories are less threat to me than those bastards in my own party. Just be nice to her."

What can you do? I phone Fiona, and she agrees to start next Monday. She does actually sound capable of an intelligent conversation, and is reasonably assertive, so at least that's promising. Greg's quite cheerful about it too. Then he admits that he met her at a local Council function, when she was accompanying her dad. He starts to twitch when I ask him exactly how attractive she is.

"Well, she looks a bit like my ex-girlfriend," he says, with what sounds like a stifled sob. (Greg is more sensitive emotionally than might appear to be the case. His heart has been broken several times.)

On the subject of matters of the heart, Max phones me four times in the evening. Four times! First to tell me he's arrrived, then to tell me that he's in his room, which is "nice, but a basic single." Call three is to tell me he's going out for dinner with "the group." The fourth call is to tell me that he's back from dinner, that the food was rubbish compared to that on the German trip, and that he's going to bed now as "this actually seems as if it's going to be a working trip." Unlike the German one?!

I know I should be glad that Max has actually remembered that I exist this time, and is doing his utmost to reassure me - but I can't help feeling he's overdoing it a bit. Josh tells me not to be an idiot, and that while "Dad can be a prat, he's not a cheating prat." Such filial respect  - and yet I am oddly comforted. Who'd have thought a teenager could demonstrate such wisdom?

*Nadhim Sahawi - MP for Stratford on Avon. A Tory.
*PMQs - Prime Minister's Questions, as usual.